Nov 15, 2007 6:39 pm US/Central
Hundreds Go To Mall For Free Electronics Recycling
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) ―
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Trucks will be on hand at the Mall of America Thursday, Friday and Saturday to accept everything from toasters and TVs to cell phones and computer monitors.
CBS
People waited in line for hours to recycle their old electronics free of charge on Thursday at the Mall of America. Last year in the United States consumers threw away 1.5 billion pounds of e-waste, including 44 million pounds of TVs and computers.
The recycling event, which kicked off at the mall, is the largest of its kind in the country.
There were cars filled with hundreds of thousands of dollar in electronics showing up at the parking lot outside of the Mall of America.
"We have a couple monitors, computers, speakers," said Lake Elmo resident David Swanson.
Lines of traffic snaked around for blocks to be able to drop off mounds of monitors, keypads and TVs.
"I was not expected to wait this long but I think it's great that everyone's coming and doing this," said Deephaven resident Heather La Rock.
"It's breath taking for a Thursday we honestly weren't expecting this many participants to come out," said event organizer Todd Schachtman.
Eagan-based Materials Processing Corporation is holding the first-ever event.
"E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world today. What we're trying to do here is educate people who participate and hopefully get a lot of e-waste so we can recycle it," said Schachtman.
The event has already accumulated more e-waste than they imagined.
"Being able to recycle them instead of just throwing them out was really important to me and so it's just nice to be able to do it and it's nice that they're offering if for free," said La Rock.
"It's pretty expensive to get rid of this stuff," said Swanson.
Nothing collected will actually go to waste. Each piece of every item dropped off gets transformed into something else.
"Steel that's in a computer will be made back into steel. Plastic will be reused and melted for other plastic products to be made into," said Schachtman. "The good thing is that we're all going the right thing."
The free electronics recycling continues Friday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The trucks are located at the Met Lot, just north of the Mall near IKEA.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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