Forget about hawking your gold jewelry. The secret to finding cash when you need it could be sitting in your garage or the bottom of your junk drawer.

During Pollution Prevention Week, we talked about multiple ways that you can dispose of used electronics in an environmentally-responsible fashion. One suggestion was recycling them through a service that might actually give you cash for your outdated cell phones, computers, and other gadgets.

Today, we ran across this infographic that details the incredible profits possible through cell phone recycling alone.

The EPA estimates over a billion wireless phones are gathering dust in households across America, and e-waste is currently the fastest growing waste stream in America.

What would happen if we recycled those items responsibly instead of trashing or forgetting about them?

We'd be $3.5 billion richer, that's what.

Graphic courtesy of uSell: All electronics traded through uSell’s partners are either resold for reuse or responsibly recycled depending on their condition.

Image Credit: Flickr - compujerjamey