New life for not-so-old and useless ewaste

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Getting away from being a “disposable society” is a great plus to the province’s new electronic waste recovery program.

Stephen Wilsack of New Minas’s Innovative Systems – and the Eastern Kings drop-off for old computers, TVs and other unwanted electronics – says the response since the February 1 launch of the recovery program has been “overwhelming. “Within 30 days, we’ve had a tractor trailer load go out – 26 pallets. That make s a difference. It’s keeping items out of the landfill.”

Innovative Systems bid for the depot – there’s another in Greenwood and one in Windsor – figuring it would add electronics recycling to the “innovative” computer services it already offers. “We’ve been doing voluntary recycling here – recycling and reusing equipment – since we opened last year. We manufacture our own computers from recycled materials. If there’s a monitor that comes in that’s still useable, we freecycle it – we give it away.”

The electronics program doesn’t offer any guarantees personal information on turned in equipment will be trashed; Wilsack’s business does it as a service to customers anyway in its repair shop. “This is what you don’t want to happen,” Wilsack says, pointing to posters on the wall of children in Third World conditions picking apart computer waste for recyclables, melting down boards for gold and other valuables and living with the piles of waste left behind. “We have a social responsibility,” Wilsack says, of society’s need to manage waste better and his own business’ role in that process. “We manufacture, rebuild and recycle – it’s from the birth to the death of technology, and we’re an integral part of it.”

WEBLINKS:

www.ACEStewardship.ca

Don’t junk it

A new Environmental Handling Fee in place as of February 1 covers the cost of the recycling program. People buying new electronics pay the fee: from $5 on new notebook computers to $45 on 46-inch-and -up TVs.

Recycle now: • desktop, notebook computers • Monitors • Printers • TVs

Recycle in 2009: • stereos • DVD players • cellphones