The angrier the better: meet the mobile throwing tournament

Having to deal with a slow old phone is a reality that everyone, sooner or later, has to face. Patience! It's not easy to surf social networks or even send a meager message while your smartphone simply doesn't respond to any of your commands. Some put the device aside and touch their lives until the word whose one recovers, others are so angry that they finish the poor guy in a blow against the wall. Although extreme, this is a frequent attitude. Take it easy… Surely you know someone who has done it.

But who would say this could become useful? Believe it or not, there is a cellphone pitch championship and it happened this year in Brazil. The 12th edition of the South American Mobile Pitch Tournament took place on September 22nd in Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, and yielded a few brand new cell phones.

Responsible for this unusual competition was Itaipu Binacional, the hydroelectric plant located on the Paraná River, which attracted 5, 000 people to assist 284 competitors in the odyssey of playing mobile phones as far as possible. The tournament was organized into six categories: male and female adult (over 16 years), male and female youth (12 to 15 years old) and male and female children (up to 11 years old).

How to participate?

To sign up, people would have to bring a defective electronic device to throw or two pounds of non-perishable food. Viewers were also encouraged to discard old devices for competition (if they were mobile phones) and recycled later.

The top three finishers in each category, along with the trophies, also earned a brand new Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite smartphone. Not bad, is it? Because of this award, the competitors did not play on the field. The most committed of all was Frank Rodrigues Souza, who, in the adult male category, dropped his jaw-dropping audience with his incredible 76.30 meters.

After all, what was the reason for all this?

Competition, while seemingly meaningless, actually has an extremely noble cause: making people aware of the production of junk mail. To get an idea of ​​how problematic this issue is, in 2017 alone more than 4 million tons of garbage of this kind were generated according to data from the United Nations Coalition on Electronic Waste.

According to the organization of the event, it was possible to collect around 3.3 tons of electronic waste - which included televisions, smartphones, radios, monitors, among other devices. In addition, the tournament also collected 13 tons of food that will be donated to 24 charities in the localities of Foz do Iguaçu and the region.