Story and photo by Craig French
Special to GUIDON

The Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division offered the Fort Leonard Wood community a convenient drive-thru collection point to dispose of e-waste in an environmentally friendly way on April  23. 

Despite heavy rains and cold temperatures the event significantly exceeded all past collection efforts, collecting approximately 5.7 tons of privately owned, obsolete, out-dated, inefficient or broken electronics. This surpassed previous collections of 3.8 tons.

Five members of the Fort Leonard Wood Marine Corps Detachment assisted with moving recyclables from personally owned vehicles to a staging area. EPC Inc., a certified electronics recycler and one of two most highly rated electronics recyclers by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources packed and transported the used electronics to their St. Charles, Mo., recycling facility to refurbish, completely recycle or otherwise recover and re-use individual electronic components.  

Following completion of the project, EPC provided Fort Leonard Wood with a certificate of recycling.

Although numbers are steadily increasing for recycling used electronics, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only 15 to 20 percent of used electronics are collected for reuse and recycling. Some industry surveys estimate that in the U.S., we toss away tens of millions of used electronics each year.

The Environmental Division has scheduled another e-waste collection in November commemorating America Recycles Day. E-cyclable’s include electronic items like televisions, computers, microwave ovens, telephones, stereos, printers and other such products. The e-waste collection cannot take government equipment.

Details will be published in the GUIDON at a later date.

(Editor’s note: French is the DPW Environmental Division Solid Waste and Recycling Program manager.)