Your electrified gizmo has finally given up the ghost. What do you do with that 20-year-old toaster, that ancient clock radio, that 1,200-watt hair dryer, that Tandy 100 laptop computer on the closet shelf so old it’s grown mold, that 27-inch cathode ray tube TV that seems like it weighs three tons? Should you throw your “e-waste” in the trash, or had you better turn it in to be recycled? Well, that depends, says Carol Bevis, deputy director for regional recycling and waste reduction at the Pulaski County Regional Solid Waste Management District. If it’s electric, you may be able to just toss it in the nearest Dumpster and nobody minds if it ends up in a landfill. But if it’s electronic, it needs to go to a recycling center. “A lot of times people think that if it plugs into the wall, it’s electronic,” Bevis explains. “If it’s a hair dryer or [an electric] razor or a toothbrush, even a can opener, they do not have the bad materials in them like the products that have a computer chip.” And they’re safe to dispose of along with the used paper towels and the potato chip bags, via the regular trash. “If it has a computer chip in it, we will take it for recycling,” she says. The list includes computers (desktops, laptops and tablets), copiers, household batteries, DVD players, paper shredders, printers, televisions, VCRs, phones, stereos, radios, fax machines and microwave ovens. Those bad materials to which Bevis referred are mostly heavy metals — predominantly poisonous lead, cadmium and mercury — that are likely to seep into water supplies. “Televisions and [cathode ray tube] monitors contain an average of four pounds of lead and could contain double that amount depending on size and make,” according to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality website (adeq.state.ar.us/poa/branch_recycling/electronics_reuse_and_recycling.aspx).
"Mercury from electronics has been cited as a leading source of mercury in municipal waste. The largest source of cadmium in municipal waste is rechargeable nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries, commonly found in laptops, cell phones and cameras."
Old televisions and some other items may also contain trace amounts of gold, silver and platinum, which are worth recovering for keeping them out of landfills and because, well, they're worth money.
18 DISTRICTS
There are 18 solid waste districts in Arkansas: the counties with larger cities -- including Pulaski, Saline, Faulkner, Washington and Craighead -- have single-county districts; the others are multiple-county groups.
The Pulaski County Regional Solid Waste Management District has five drop-off centers for residential electronics: in the recycling center in Jacksonville; at the public works departments in Maumelle, North Little Rock and Sherwood; and in Little Rock, at 10001 Kanis Road, near Baptist Medical Center and behind a police substation.
Bevis says that last one, open 7 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Thursdays (except Thanksgiving) and 7 a.m-noon the first Saturday of each month, is by far the busiest.
"We have a cargo trailer on standby over at the Kanis site because it is the largest drop-off," she says. "When one gets full, we pull the other one in. Most of the time on Thursdays, we fill up two cargo trailers."
At each e-waste drop-off the county district also operates a "Green Station," which accepts used oil, gasoline and antifreeze and 4-foot, 8-foot and compact fluorescent bulbs.
Call (501) 340-8787 or visit the website, regionalrecycling.org, for details.
The cargo trailers for the Kanis Road site travel across Little Rock to a warehouse at 1807 E. 23rd St., operated by Rogers-based eSCO Processing and Recycling (escoprocessingandrecycling.com).
"We have been under contract with them two years now and they're doing an excellent job," Bevis says.
The three employees at eSCO's 25,000-square-foot warehouse separate, sort and "de-manufacture" the items, baling up the plastics (seven categories), accessories (adapters, keyboards, mice, ink cartridges etc.), batteries, cooling fans, motherboards and so on, for transshipment, either for resale on secondary markets or to be recycled. (In the four years the company has been operating in central Arkansas, it has expanded from a 5,000-square-foot facility in Benton and a 10,000-square-foot transfer station in Bauxite.)
"There's a zero landfill policy for electronics," says Fred Wizer, general manager of the plant. "Nothing goes into the landfill after we're finished with it. Except broken pallets."
That's the goal for all electronics, according to a state law (Arkansas Code § 25-34-111): "Effective Jan. 1, 2010, the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission may establish and implement rules banning the disposal of all computer and electronic equipment in Arkansas landfills." However, according to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality site, the ban has not yet been put into place, so how residents dispose of e-waste is subject to the restrictions of local landfills.
ESTABLISHING A FUND
Meanwhile, Act 512 of 2007 set up the Arkansas Computer and Electronic Waste Recycling Grants Program, which, according to the environmental quality department site, "provides financial assistance to regional solid waste management districts and local governments to develop and improve recycling opportunities for unwanted computer and electronic devices." And it authorized the collection of a fee on each ton of solid waste that went into landfills.
"That allowed ADEQ to collect money from the Landfill Post-Closure Trust Fund," Bevis says. "As long as it stays at $25 million, then the dollar per ton that's charged at the landfill goes for the electronics recycling fund, and that's a statewide fund, divided into the 18 solid waste districts, and they run their programs from that."
That fund made it possible for the Pulaski County district to sign up with eSCO. Previously it shipped its e-waste to a federal prison in Texarkana.
"That was our only option," Bevis explains. "We carried everything to Unicor in Texarkana, Texas, at the federal penitentiary, and that was great -- they were taking it for free, they were paying for our transportation cost, and we didn't have anywhere else to take it. If we had contracted with anyone in state, we were going to have to pay them to take it from us, and that was entirely out of our budget; we could not afford it."
In addition to the one-day-a-week drop-off points for residential "customers," the Pulaski County district also holds two monster drop-offs a year for businesses, churches, hospitals, nonprofits, schools and individuals on a parking lot across the street just to the north of North Little Rock's Verizon Arena.
"We've got one coming up in October [Oct. 22-23]," Bevis says. "We get around 400,000-500,000 pounds" -- that's 200-250 tons -- "at that two-day collection. A lot of businesses come out for that." There's also one in the spring.
Bevis says businesses can call and set up appointments, "and if they have a large amount, eSCO will go and pick them up." Wizer confirms he has a pickup and a box truck standing by.
"We may have it open by Dec. 1, but sure by the first of the year, we are starting a new business program. We've purchased a large box truck, with a wrap on it that says 'e-waste recycling' -- it'll be very noticeable. Give us a call, make an appointment and eSCO will go over and load it up for them and take it back to their processing center and they will not have to do anything."
Bevis noted that with one exception, there's no cost to consumers to drop off their devices.
"We do these programs free, and we do not make anything off these programs," she says. "We're doing it as a service, and we hope to always continue to do it free.
"There's one exception: Old televisions are very expensive to recycle. They're just loaded with mercury and lead, and those cathode ray tubes. ... We will collect them, but with businesses, since most households don't have three or more televisions, we take the first three televisions free; any others after that, it's $5 a TV, which is still not bad at all."
HomeStyle on 09/13/2014