eRecycler at Christ United Methodist Church - Plano, TX

There’s something unique going on in the parking lot of Christ United Methodist Church in Plano, TX.  Vehicles pull up in cues, workers remove unwanted electronics from back seats and truck beds, electronics are counted or weighed and fork-lifts load pallets of shrink wrapped computer monitors into a semi-tractor trailer.  People in green shirts try to avoid the hot Saturday morning summer sun while doing their job.  It’s all a part of electronic waste or “e-waste” collection program by the company eRecycler, LLC.  Consumers pay a fee to have eRecycler properly dispose of their old unwanted electronics.  TV’s cost $10 dollars regardless of type or size.  The fee for computer monitors is $5.  Other electronics are taken back at a cost of 10 cents per pound.   They will even take microwave ovens as long as they are clean. 

Americans discard an estimated 400 million pieces of e-waste annually.  The EPA estimates that 82% of all US consumer electronic waste goes either to domestic landfills or incinerators.  The other 18% are documented as recycled.  50-80% of the e-waste documented as recycled is really being exported and dumped in developing nations by "sham recyclers", or sent to U.S. prison systems.  In countries such as China, India and Nigeria, exported e-waste is dumped, burned, and processed under very crude conditions that result in toxic exposure to workers and communities.  Electronics contain heavy metals such as mercury and lead.  The average television contains 4-8 pounds of lead.  The fee that eRecycler charges goes to remediate these heavy metals from the electronics they collect so they don’t wind up back in the environment potentially poisoning ground water.  The plastics and other components of electronics contain brominated fire retardants (BFR) which are suspected to have negative health effects to humans and animals.

ERecyclers are a zero landfill company.  What this means is that the electronics that eRecycler collects are disassembled into their basic components.  Parts that can be reused are sent to vendors, other parts are sent to smelters in the U.S. unlike unscrupulous e-waste recyclers that export e-waste to China, India or developing countries where they are burned in open air fires that pollute the atmosphere and poison the people that work in, or live near them.

If you have a computer you need to dispose of eRecycler canv securly dispose of them to ensure any resident data on your hard-drive is wiped clean or rendered inaccessable.  They offer certified physical destruction of hard drives, floppy disks, CDs, and tapes. They also have shredders that will insure your information is safe and completely unrecoverable. Small lots of drives can be destroyed while you wait in most cases.