Your old phones can help plant new trees with new AT&T trade-in program

Got a pile of old phones and tablets collecting dust in a drawer? Planning to upgrade to the new iPhone and need to get rid of the old one? Good news: You can turn them into a tree.

AT&T and insurance company Assurant are teaming up to support the Arbor Day Foundation’s forest restoration program, assisting areas hit by the devastating California wildfire season. During the month of April, for every device turned in through AT&T's online and in-person trade-in program, a tree will be planted in the Placerville Nursery for California Wildfire Reforestation, the only forest service nursery in the state. The companies will help seed 75,000 new trees as a result of the initiative.

"AT&T has been connecting Californians for 145 years, and we are committed to helping our communities as we rebuild together – which is why this year’s Tree for Trade-In initiative with the Arbor Day Foundation and Assurant was especially important," Roman Smith, AT&T’s director of global environmental sustainability, told Mashable.

The program adds to AT&T's disaster response initiatives in the wake of southern California's wildfire outbreak. Teaming up with first responders and local organizations to keep people connected on the ground, AT&T provided public WiFi and charging stations at designated evacuation zones and deployed its Mobile Connectivity Center (MCC) to provide Malibu residents with free Wi-Fi, device charging, and computers. The company also provided credits to customers in impacted areas and donated $2 million to relief efforts, Smith explained, mobilizing "one of the industry’s largest disaster response programs to provide additional connectivity support during the fires."

As the climate warms, wildfires and other weather phenomena are intensifying — just two degrees of warming has led to historic, unseasonable periods of burn, caused by dried out vegetation.

Global e-waste, meanwhile, poses a different, but related, set of problems. Millions of devices are traded in to telecommunications giants each year. Millions more are simply discarded or thrown away — over the last few decades, it's become the fastest growing solid waste stream facing the planet. A new survey from CNET (Mashable and CNET are both published by Ziff Davis) found that one in three U.S. adults holds onto old devices simply because they don't know how to recycle them.

Complicating the matter: the questionable efficacy of electronic recycling programs and the finite nature of the important metals used in electronic batteries. Sustainability advocates, trying to reconcile the e-waste problem, and electronic companies, investing more in a circular economy, find common ground with device trade-in and recycling programs.

"We’re proud to join with AT&T for nearly 15 years to help realize their sustainability objectives through circularity. It’s a collaboration that has created a measurable impact in reducing carbon emissions and electronic waste,” said Biju Nair, EVP and president of Assurant Global Connected Living.

In 2024, AT&T ran a similar trade-in program, planting more than 50,000 trees across forests in Oregon and Florida. "This Earth Month," said Charlene Lake, AT&T chief sustainability officer and senior vice president of corporate responsibility, "our Tree for Trade-In initiative with the Arbor Day Foundation and Assurant symbolizes the power of collective action, as each returned device helps plant a tree, fostering renewal for communities affected by the California wildfires."