Going Postal with your E-Waste
Ran into an interesting article today - U.S. Postal Service Begins E-Waste Recycling Program
This is the first national program for the U.S. and is set to try and deal with the 2 million tons of e-waste we generate each year. Right now, it is only available in a few cities, but if it is successful, it will expand nationwide this fall.
How will it work? The Post Office will provide pre-paid envelopes in which you can put your unwanted electronics - digital cameras, printer cartridges, MP3 players, blackberries, cell phones and PDAs. These will be mailed to Clover Technologies Group who will either refurbish them or strip them of all their components and recycled. Clover pays for the postage for the envelopes, so our postage will not go up. Additionally, Clover has a zero-to-landfill policy that is ideal.
You should be able to pick up the envelopes at the Post Office, and then drop the filled envelopes into any blue postal box. Easy, right? I think so! I may even go down to Chicago to pick up some of these envelopes so that I can support the program for the future.
If successful nationwide, other electronics may also be included in the program.
This isn’t the first program running at the post office. Did you know they also have a program for recycling lightbulbs? I didn’t. It is for CFLs, and you have to go and buy the recycling kits from Sylvania. Not as sweet as the Clover program, by far. And other alternatives exist.
But it is nice to see the Post Office getting involved.
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One of the solutions I’ve found that help tackle e-waste and keep existing, outdated PCs going is to go with a company called Userful. They’re huge on green computing and can use a single existing PC to power up to ten workstations at once. This is a huge way to help combat e-waste and bring outdated PCs back to life. You can find out more on this here – http://www.userful.com.
A few months ago, I was at the big Post Office in S. Boston, and I found a bunch of pre-paid postal sleeves for sending in ink cartridges. I took a pile of them and keep them at my desk. I think it’s a great step forward, since so much of the new technology is such a waste of resources.