Kane’s 5 Recycling Drop-Off Spots Collect 3 Million Pound of Electronics
If you’re an alert reader of Kane County Connects or simply a citizen who cares about protecting the environment, you’re probably well aware of Kane County Recycles’ monthly and quarterly recycling events. In fact, there’s one coming up on Saturday.
But you might not be aware that there are five permanent drop-off locations for electronics in Kane County open during the week. Four are at public works locations in Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, and West Dundee, and one is in Elgin at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
Since the 2012 Illinois Electronic Products Recycling and Reuse Act banned electronic items from landfills, more than 30,000 residents of Kane County dropped off electronics for recycling through the county program, Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland said.
A whopping 3 million pounds will have been collected in the first two years since the law became active (1.6 million pounds were collected in 2013 and 1.3 million in the first 9 months of 2014).
“That’s 70 semi-trucks full of material that has been kept out of landfills already in just under two years,” Jarland said.
Worldwide, an estimated 20 million to 50 million tons of electronic waste is generated annually, and the USEPA estimates that 85 percent of it ends up in landfills. Electronics contain many valuable resources like metals, glass, and plastic that can be reclaimed, reused, and recycled! Recycling, rather than dumping these materials, uses far less energy than mining and refining raw metals (which include gold, cadmium, lead and silver) and reduces the amount of energy and other resources used in new product manufacturing. It just makes sense to recycle these materials.
In Kane County, you can recycle TVs, Computers, phones, microwaves, and basically anything that has a plug on it! Please see www.countyofkane.org/recycling for more information on locations and the list of accepted items.
You can help keep these programs free and easy to use by following one simple procedure when you deliver equipment to the permanent drop-off locations:
- Please load your equipment into the container as if you were loading a moving truck!
- Pack it in, with the large items at the bottom and the smaller items at the top.
- Load into the far end of the trailer, and do not just set it down at the open end. “This will help to save costs for the program by making sure we are transporting very full containers!” Jarland said.
If you have questions, contact Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland at recycle@countyofkane.org or 630-208-3841.
