If you tossed your old cell phone in a drawer and forgot about it once you brought home that shiny new camera model, you'll want to check out a new exhibition at London's Science Museum. "Dead Ringers" looks at what happens to the cell phones we discard, ways of recycling them, and greener designs for the future.

With an online component as well as a featured gallery on the BBC's web site, you don't have to go to London to soak up the mobile 411. Cell phone handsets that end up in landfills can leak toxic chemicals - yet only 10 to 15 percent are recycled. According to the exhibition, there are seven billion cell phones in the world, but only 1.3 billion users.

New laws in Europe will soon require that more cell phones are recycled; a BBC photo shows a printer ribbon made entirely out of cell phone components. The museum also features info on emerging technologies that would make cell phones less of an environmental problem: batteries free of toxic chemicals, cell phone covers made of sunflower seeds (plant them in the ground and grow a garden!), and circuit boards crafted from chicken feathers and soy, to name just a few.

Photo credit: Warwick University, via London Science Museum