Recycle Your Outdated Electronics

Why recycle electronics?

1. Keep it out of the landfill
   1. keep hazardous materials out of the landfill – lead, mercury, and other substances in electronics may harm the environment if not managed properly
   2. landfill space is expensive – all recycling helps reduce need for additional landfill space
2. Recover and re-use raw materials in the electronics
   1. conserves natural resources – electronic components contain gold, silver, palladium, copper, platinum, aluminum
   2. conserves energy used in mining natural resources – mining and manufacturing virgin materials takes more energy that recovering materials
   3. reduces pollution – mining, transporting ore, and manufacturing virgin materials generates air and water pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions

In 2012, 8.5 billion pounds of electronic waste was generated in the United States, but only 1.8 billion pounds were recycled. What happened to the rest of it?

That 8.5 billion pounds works out to about 27 pounds per person. Close to 80% of that came from business use, which leaves about 5.5 pounds per person for personal home electronics. What did you do with your 5.5 pounds? Do you have an unused computer, laptop, tablet, or cell phone sitting in your closet?

With 61,675 people in Ward County, 5.5 pounds per person equals over 330,000 pounds of electronics from 2012 … plus the years since then… that either made it into landfills or is still sitting in storage.

Thanks to Xcel Energy, you can bring one monitor, one printer, and up to 25 pounds of general electronics to the Kalix one-day collection event on Thursday October 5th at the Slumberland parking lot located on South Broadway AT NO CHARGE! Additional electronics will be accepted at regular rates during the event, or anytime during regular hours at the Kalix Recycling Center.