County transfer station accepts e-waste
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
Electronics are marvelous, but they also pose a problem: What to do with an item after it has served its usefulness or is no longer wanted.
New and updated electronic gadgets are being invented every day and eagerly purchased by consumers. People tend to store the old ones away, where they gather dust while waiting to be reused, recycled, or thrown away.
Industry experts estimate that more than 75 percent of all computers ever sold remain stockpiled in closets, garages, office storage rooms, and warehouses.
They say most "e-waste" eventually ends up in landfills. Only 11 percent is recycled. This poses a problem because the heavy metals, plastics, and flame retardants in these gadgets can leach into the ground and contaminate the environment.
According to Kansas Department of Health and Environment, e-waste contains many valuable, recoverable materials such as aluminum, ferrous metals, copper, gold, and silver.
It also contains toxic and hazardous waste materials including mercury, lead, cadmium, beryillium, chromium, antimony, and many other chemicals.
Therefore, it is best that these items be refurbished, reused, and recycled whenever possible.
Instead of throwing electronic items into the trash, people living in Marion County can bring their TVs, computers, and other electronic gadgets to the transfer station in Marion for separate disposal.
Manager Rollin Schmidt said when time allows, workers sometimes pull large, electronic products from trash when it is dumped at the transfer station. He said a Newton man comes and picks up the e-waste at no cost.
Schmidt noted that the Butler County recycling plant at El Dorado recently received a grant to expand its facility to recycle electronics.
The operation is expected to be up and running within a year, after which Marion County will deliver electronics products to it, Schmidt said.
He said the only electronic products the transfer station can't accept are big, console TVs.
According to an article published on eBay, in the next three years, individuals and organizations worldwide will replace more than 400 million computers. The average cell phone in the U.S. is replaced after 18 months.
E-waste routinely is exported to developing countries where people are hired at low wages to work in scrap yards disassembling electronics to extract valuable substances. In the process, they are exposed to toxic substances which can eventually lead to health problems.
In the United States, manufacturers, governments, and environmental groups are working together to manage the e-waste issue. More and more recycling centers are being built exclusively for handling e-waste.
At these centers, plastic cases are ground up and then resold to manufacturers for new products. The hard metal from computers is smeltered and then resold as raw material, keeping toxic materials out of landfills.
