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This spring, Interior Alaska Green Star and its sponsor organizations will be providing Fairbanksans with an opportunity to recycle their old computers and other unwanted electronic devices.

These recycling events will take place at the Carlson Center parking lot Saturday (general public) and April 29 (for businesses by appointment). Businesses that plan to bring electronic waste should contact Green Star at 452-4152 to set up a time.

As in the past, Green Star must charge a recycling fee that covers the cost for processing and proper disposal of hazardous materials. It is Green Star’s goal to keep these costs as low as possible, and would like to thank all our sponsors who help underwrite these recycling events.

You might ask why Green Star goes to all this trouble to recycle electronics if it doesn’t pay for itself up front? When electronics are thrown away in landfills, much of the discarded waste has the potential to release a variety of hazardous substances and, if not contained, can contaminate surface and ground water supplies.

Here are a few facts about how electronics can be toxic:

• Approximately 70 percent of heavy metals and 40 percent of lead found in landfills comes from discarded electronic equipment.

• Portable DVD players are classified as hazardous waste in California due to the amount of mercury they contain.

• A typical computer monitor or TV contains 6 pounds of lead.

• A computer’s protected plastic housing is coated with a brominated flame-retardant, which is listed as a Persistent Organic Pollutant.

• In 2005, the United States generated 2.63 million tons of electronic waste.

How many businesses will pay 30 to 50 cents per pound to recycle electronic waste, when they could toss it in a dumpster at a transfer site for nothing?

Actually, there is a large financial incentive for businesses to recycle electronics, because hazardous waste disposal can be very expensive. Federal laws require organizations that generate more than 220 pounds of regulated hazardous waste (about the weight of four computers and one large printer) to be classified as a small- or large-quantity generator, which must handle and dispose of their hazardous waste in an approved manner.

In Alaska, the landfill is not an approved disposal method of hazardous waste for these classes of businesses. The good news for these businesses is that recycled or donated electronics are not counted as hazardous waste.

It’s not hard to believe electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing segments of our nation’s waste stream. In the 1980s, few people had PCs. Today, in the U.S., obsolete computers outnumber people. With the change to high-definition TVs just around the corner, experts warn about a tidal wave of unwanted TVs entering the waste stream, filling the country’s landfills including the Fairbanks North Star Borough landfill. I cannot tell you how much e-waste is stockpiled in Fairbanks, but I can share this statistic: Last year Green Star collected more than 19.5 tons of e-waste in just two days. TOTEM provided us a 41 foot trailer and with the help of the Solid Waste Division and 46 volunteers we filled that trailer top to bottom.

For more information on how you can be involved with recycling visit www.iagreenstar.org.