What do you do with e-waste if you’re not Daniel Arsham? (P’Welcome to the Future,’ consisting of thousands of calcified objects from the ’90s, at Locust Projects. Photo by Daniel Maurer)
If the warm weather inspires you to do a little spring cleaning this weekend then you’re in luck: this Saturday Williamsburg will host an e-waste recycling event on Grand Street between Humboldt and Graham Streets. Abandoning electronics on the side of the road is actually illegal, so unless you plan on incorporating them into a robocop self-portrait, the second best thing you can do with that five-CD disk changer you’ve held onto since college is to take it to the drop-off site anytime between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
If you’ve noticed an unusual amount of old TVs and the like littering the streetscape, it’s because effective January 1 of this year the NYC Department of Sanitation stopped collecting electronics due to the implementation of new legislation prohibiting New Yorkers from throwing away e-waste. According to the Ecology Center website, the E.P.A. found that electronic waste contributes 70% of the toxins found in landfills while only contributing 1% of the volume of materials in landfills. Once the three-month grace period is up at the end of March, violators of the law will be subject to a $100 fine.
To prevent that from happening, the Lower East Side Ecology Center will host roughly 50 e-waste collection events this year; the goal is to hit every borough and neighborhood at least once, said Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, marketing director for the Ecology Center. The center takes working and nonworking computers, monitors, printers, televisions and cell phones; view their e-waste FAQ sectoin for a full list of accepted items.
All of the equipment dropped off during the event is sorted and packed by Ecology Center staff and transported to the e-waste warehouse in Brooklyn. While the majority of items are either not working or too obsolete to be reused, newer items are tested and refurbished and then sold to the public to support the program and promote local reuse.
Some lucky vintage items are plucked from the heap and restored to their former glory in the e-waste warehouse’s museum, where they’re displayed and lent out to be used as props. “Things that arrive in good shape, whether they work or not, are sought out by theater productions,” Danberg-Ficarelli said. People can rent typewriters, old calculators, vintage phones, speaker systems and TVs. “Anything that’s in that funky, unique spectrum we’ll hang on to,” she said, adding that they’re developing a new online gallery where people can view and reserve items online.
Danberg-Ficarelli urged anyone making the trip to one of the recyclign events or the Center’s e-waste warehouse in Gowanus (open and accepting elecctroincis five days a week) to “share the love” and ask their neighbors if they have any electronics to dispose of as well.
For more information, visit www.lesecologycenter.org or call the Center at 212-477-4022.
