Alaska Green Star holds Fairbanks e-cycling event
Published Friday, October 3, 2008
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Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — Whether it’s an old television set, computer, microwave oven, printer, fax machine, cell phone, calculator or CD player, Interior Alaska Green Star wants it.
The Fairbanks nonprofit organization dedicated to waste reduction, energy efficiency and pollution prevention is hosting its annual fall electronics recycling event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Monday in the back parking lot of the Westmark Hotel on Eighth Avenue and Noble Street.
Green Star executive director Darcie Warden is hoping to match or top the amount of e-waste — 12 tons — that the organization collected at a similar event in April.
“We’ll take televisions, computers, printers, copiers, calculators, telephones, discs, batteries,” Warden said.
There is a per item fee ranging from $38 for a large television set to 50 cents for a calculator to cover the cost of recycling, and some items such as cell phones, keyboards and answering machines can be dropped off for free.
Paying to recycle old electronic equipment is worth it in the long run, Warden said.
“We cannot have our electronics thrown away in the landfill,” she said. “They have toxic materials in them. There is lots of lead in televisions and mercury in flat screens.” Some metals such as copper also are salvaged and recycled.
“We’re utlitizing resources that don’t have to be pulled out of ground, and we’re saving room in our landfill at the same time,” Warden said.
In the three years it has hosted e-cycling events in Fairbanks, Green Star has collected almost 45 million tons of e-waste.
With the switchover from analog to digital television set to happen in less than five months, Warden expects to see a spike in the number of television sets brought in because many people have replaced their old sets with new ones.
Workers will be reminding people who haven’t bought a new television to keep it so they can recycle it at Green Star’s next e-cycling event in April.
“If you haven’t bought a new television yet, just remember that you can recycle it this spring,” she said.
Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.
Community Discussion
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Good efforts, but the recycling efforts in Fairbanks need to be stepped up considerably. Simply put, anything that can be recycled should not be thrown out with other rubbish. For example:
How to recycle a tea bag
1. Remove the two tiny staples attaching the string to the tag and the tea bag.
2. Place the staples in the metal recycling
3. Open the tea bag and dump the tea leaves into compost
4. Place the empty bag, string, and tag into paper/cardboard recycling
i absolutely love this idea but one question, let's say people out in the rural areas want to recycle too but have no means to send it over, how would one do that??
Visit the iagreenstar website to get the contact information and give us a call. With enough advance time we can usually work something out. It might be a bit too late this time but we'll have another event in Spring.
http://www.iagreenstar.org/e-recycling.p...
Why couldn't the Borough pay the costs of bringing in your electronics to encourage people to do so instead of dropping their electronics in the dumpster? The savings to the amount of man hours disposing of this stuff to the Borough could be quite a lot.
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