A poll earlier this month said young people are paying more attention to changes on the planet. They are recycling more than their parents and are much greener than their grandparents.
On this Earth Day weekend, the attention turns to what to do with old television sets, computers, cell phones or batteries that are sitting in closets, garages or desk drawers. It's a good time to properly move them back into the recycling chain.
Earth 911, an environmental Web portal, suggests technological advances for all electronic equipment quickly render it obsolete. More than 20 million personal computers went out of use in 1998. Less than 15 percent of them were reused or recycled.
The Earth 911 Web site allows viewers to type in a zip code and the type of item to be tossed and the portal tells you where to take it locally for proper recycling or disposal.
A local organization, Ambucs, recycles computers for people with disabilities. They recently moved into larger quarters at 2012 Research Park Blvd. They have distributed more than 4,000 such computers to date.
The National Safety Council estimates that 63 million computers are obsolete and about 600 million computers are stored somewhere. More than 130 million phones are disposed of each year. Batteries make up less than 1 percent of what is dumped in landfills but they are responsible for a high percentage of heavy metals found there.
Earth 911 says other e-waste items that need to be recycled rather than dumped include printers, fax machines, scanners, copy machines, televisions, radios, microwave ovens, stereo system components, camcorders, digital cameras, telephones, hair dryers, electric typewriters and video game consoles.
