Today Sprint jumped on eco-friendly bandwagon with the Reclaim (pictured), a new cell phone from Samsung made with recyclable materials that will be available on August 16 for $50 (after a $30 mail-in rebate).

Sprint says that 40 percent of the phone's outer case is made of a "bio-plastic" material derived from corn—and no polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, and nearly free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs). The accompanying charger, Sprint claims, consumes "12 times less power than the Energy Star standard for standby power consumption," and the packaging is made from 70 percent recycled materials that includes soy-based ink for the printing materials. (Though the company is reaching when it claims not including a printed manual is part of its efforts to be green.)

Measuring 3.87 x 2.32 x 0.61 inches and weighing 3.5 ounces, the Reclaim sports a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 2-megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom and camcorder, Bluetooth stereo, and support for Sprint TV®, the Sprint Music Store, and turn-by-turn GPS navigation. Its interface provides one-click access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. It also has several Discovery Channel-produced applications and links to tips on how users can become more "green."

The Reclaim is available in blue or green, but it isn't the first phone with green credentials. At January's CES, Motorola unveiled its own eco-friendly phone called the Renew, which you can also buy for $50 from Motorola's Web site.

Other makers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson have also unveiled similar green phones, but only as prototypes or concepts. And advocates, including the environmental experts at Consumer Reports, warn that there are many different definitions of what constitutes “greenness” in products, and that the complexity of assessing environmental impact may defy a simple declaration of green status. —Mike Gikas