Many people throw away their broken iPhones or keep them around to use as paperweights, but a phone and screen repair specialist is coming up with creative ways to make these handsets useful again, Mashable reported.
Chris Koerner launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month to raise money for Twice Used, a service that takes broken iPhones and transforms them into household products. Parts of the disabled handsets are used to make everything from earrings to analog clocks.
"We have designed and prototyped a handful of attractive products that all have one thing in common: They are all made from used iPhone glass and other parts such as home buttons," according to Twice Used's kickstarter web site. "All of this glass comes from iPhones that were in the clumsy hands of individuals all over the world. The phones were dropped, brought into a repair shop to be fixed, and then the glass was sold to us to make this artwork."
While working at an iPhone repair shop, Koerner came up with the idea after noticing thousands of broken phone parts were being thrown away because they were too damaged to be recycled.
The goal of Twice Used is to eliminate hazardous waste by manufacturing modern household goods by hand.
"There will always be a market for this," Koerner told Mashable. "People have always been and will always be breaking their phones... If it weren't for my repair experience, I wouldn't have known that these materials are harmful to the environment."
Koerner created a Kickstarter so that he and other Twice Used employees can network and develop partnerships with other electronics repair and recycling services, Gizmodo reported. The campaign site is also designed to serve as a point-of-purchase until the team launches its own official website.
The smartphone parts being transformed generally come from other repair shops, Mashable reported.
The money from the Kickstarter page would be used to increase their supply.
Although Twice Used have about 20,000 broken components of smartphones, their home goods require a lot of materials. For example, a Twice Used coffee table alone requires 100 phone displays and a clock requires 12 panes of busted glass, Venture beat reported.
Twice Used has raised more than $2,200 on their kickstarter web site.
IPhone users can't send their broken smartphones directly to Twice Used, but anyone can purchase the items made from other discarded models by visiting their kickstarter web site.