E-waste is a big deal + a retraction
I wish we could get front page coverage just for being a cool upstart, but ’tis not the way the world works. RedPost/Recycle was front page, again, in another local newspaper, The Elkhart Truth. Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ll be able to convince the county to fund our little goodwill effort. But if nothing else, at least we’re raising awareness that e-waste is a big deal: that treating used paint as hazardous and mercury/lead/cadmium as not hazardous doesn’t make sense.
Retraction: apparently, I was incorrect that the County Landfill dumps e-waste collected at the monthly drop-off into the landfill. They do properly recycle it. E-waste brought outside of the monthly drop-off is dropped into the landfill. I misheard at the solid waste meeting in December.
From Kim Davis, manager of the landfill:
I’m manager of Elkhart County Landfill and, as such, suffer no delusions about this nations disgraceful generation of waste or about the imperfect solution which is landfilling. However, it is the current best unfortunate solution until education and or thermal depolymerization, etc. make “zero waste” a reality. In the meantime, I want to clear up some misrepresentations that you all seem to disseminating. First Hannah, you made a statement at the District meeting that since e-waste from private individuals was going to the landfill, heavy metals were going in to the groundwater. That possibility does exist if and only if the HDPE 60 mil flexible membrane liner should fail and if the twice yearly third party monitoring of 23 up and down gradient groundwater monitoring wells showed groundwater drinking standards were compromised and we did nothing about it, which is a regulatory impossibility.
Secondly Eric, you lamented in your letter to Tim Neese that e-waste from the Household Hazardous Collection was going to the Landfill. That is absolutely not the case. The only e-waste entering Elkhart County Landfill is from uninformed homeowners who mingle e-waste with residential trash and are unregulated by EPA rules. We discourage that practice and refer them to the Hazardous Waste Collection and to RedPost. We accept no commercial or business e-waste.
Finally, given the fact that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, are you sure toxic e-waste from your own collection efforts are not ultimately to be found in the drinking water of Guangdong Province China. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about waste disposal in your own back yard.
