Dumping Electronics the Green Way…
We have an entire loft in the shed taken up with electronic this-n-that’s that we haven’t gotten rid of because we don’t know where to take it. I know they are toxic and dangerous to just dump and our recycle center doesn’t take any of it — so it sits in storage and moves when we do.
The other day, I spotted in the New York Times, this article “A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics.” At last, it seemed that someone or some groups were working on the problem. The paragraph that caught my eye was:
Since 2004, 18 states and New York City have approved laws that make manufacturers responsible for recycling electronics, and similar statutes were introduced in 13 other states this year. The laws are intended to prevent a torrent of toxic and outdated electronic equipment — television sets, computers, monitors, printers, fax machines — from ending up in landfills where they can leach chemicals into groundwater and potentially pose a danger to public health.
The problem was that a careful reading of the article didn’t elicit a list of those 18 states, though several of them got mentioned in the article. So, I clicked on the EPA link and found it only took me to other articles about the EPA. But, being crafty and loving Google, I looked for keywords and found this link to the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. On this site they had a link where you could look up and find a site in your state to take your own electronics to safely dump them. The only problem is that Maryland only has one site that takes electronics, and it’s in Baltimore — which means we’ll have to plan ahead to get there while they are open and based on our pile of electronics we’re ready to dump, it may take several trips.
What I’ve learned from this is that nothing is easy. It never is but you’d think that since toxic waste is such a problem and our society is getting more and more electronic devices in order to keep up connected and online and working 24/7 that it would be a bit easier to recycle or dump outdated equipment–safely. It seems from my reading over the day that the major problem is that no one wants to pay for it and no one wants to be responsible.
Okay, my husband and I recycle. We have ever since the first programs 20+ years ago in Maine. Here in Maryland we have to actually store our recyclables and take them to the center ourselves since we don’t have any pickup where we live and the center is about a 45 minute drive away. To get electronics to Baltimore is about 1 1/2 hours away by car and we need to get there during their open hours. We’ll probably do that but why isn’t there a skip for dropping off this type of waste at every major recycle center? Why make it so difficult for people to do the right thing?
For years I’ve wondered why there aren’t companies that buy waste from one company and sell it as input to another one? It only makes sense since often the waste of one is the input for another. The government should be encouraging such reuse of toxic materials. Why make more and more toxic stuff when we could reuse what’s already there with a bit of cleaning and filtering.
More food for thought I guess — I’m still trying to find a place to recycle our old batteries. We mostly use rechargeable ones but we do have some that just need to be tossed (mostly those for the camera and other related equipment). Our recycle center supposedly takes them but we haven’t been able to find the spot to put them, but have found plenty of signs saying not to put them HERE.
What’s your experiences with recycling or safely dumping electronic wastes?