by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
It doesn’t take an MIT graduate to know that Americans are buying electronic equipment by the truck full these days.
Not only do many businesspeople have cell phones, but it seems every teenager and housewife has one, too.
Home and car stereo equipment occupies several rows of every electronics store and most households have multiple television sets, VCRs and personal computers. And, every time a computer ad runs, the company reminds you that what you have at home — no matter if you bought it last week — is now ancient by computer standards.
With all this buying and upgrading, the question becomes, what do you with the old stuff?
City Council member Elaine Brown is currently working on two ways to answer that question and keep old TVs and computers out of area landfills. Brown is sponsoring a resolution, which is still in committee, that would require the City’s solid waste and resource management division to schedule a special city-wide “e-waste” collection and recycling day early in 2002.
Brown’s contention is that the cathode ray tubes inside televisions and computer monitors that contain lead could eventually leak into the aquifer and contaminate the local water supply. Brown acknowledges it would take a long time for this to occur and a few TVs and monitors wouldn’t be very harmful. The problem is that Americans are both buying and disposing of those products at an incredible rate. The landfills are steadily filling and the reality is there is a legitimate environmental danger in having thousands and thousands of televisions and computer monitors sitting in the ground.
Brown’s immediate objective is establish a date in the near future when people from all over Jacksonville could get rid of their old TVs and computers in an ecologically safe manner.
“Now that people have bought new computers and those slim TVs for Christmas, the question is how to dispose of the old ones,” said Brown. “There are many others who have them sitting in their garages. Before, that was not a problem. But now all over the nation there are computer monitors in landfills.
“As we have collected a storage of different electronics, people don’t know what to do with them.”
Brown is currently working on two ways to help solve the problem. One is to establish a date sometime in February when everyone in Jacksonville can bring their old TV or computer monitor to a central site established by the City.
“We could put it in Metro Park or by the stadium,” said Brown. “I have asked Janice Eggleston Davis [the head of solid waste for the City] to come up with a collection cost for me.”
The idea would be to collect the old electronics and then give them to a salvage company. That may sound like an opportunity for someone — like the City — to benefit financially from hundreds of old TVs and monitors, but Brown said that would hardly be the case.
“In reality, we would probably end up paying someone to dispose of them,” said Brown.
Statewide, Brown is working on a committee that would like to see Florida follow similar guidelines set forth recently by California concerning the disposal of old TVs and monitors — considered hazardous waste because of the lead and mercury contents. California is seriously considering legislation that would make it law for electronics manufacturers to force dealers like Circuit City and Best Buy to become responsible for the disposal of their old products.
“When you buy a new TV or computer from someone like that, it comes with a certificate or registration number,” said Brown. “When you are ready to upgrade, the old becomes their problem, not the consumer’s. That’s what should happen.”
While it may take years for Florida to adopt a similar stance, Brown wants action locally a lot sooner. Local landfills are lined well and could withstand plenty of electronically hazardous waste. However, Brown’s concern focuses on 50-100 years down the road when hundreds of thousands of Floridians have upgraded dozens of times.
“I know the dump sites are all lined well with concrete,” said Brown. “This is not for now, but for the future.”
In addition to the initial good of accumulating used and unwanted electronics during a city-wide collection, Brown said an added benefit would be the opportunity to educate the public about hazardous electronic waste.
“You don’t just put your old TV in a black plastic bag and put it on the side of the road,” said Brown. “We want to educate people that this is hazardous waste and doesn’t have to go in a landfill.”
Ultimately, Brown would like people to dispose of their old electronic equipment properly without having to get in their cars. Each district in Jacksonville would have a specific hazardous waste pick up day when residents could leave those items at the curb.