First Ever Capitol Hill Electronics Collection Day

In the US, there is no national system to ensure the proper collection and disposition of reusable electronic equipment or end-of-life e-waste disposal. It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that on Thursday, May 28 2009 the US Congress is going to clean out its closets and hold a discarded electronics collection event for the first time in its 220 year history.

The event will be on Thursday, May 28 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern and people from congressional offices will be schlepping any electronic items with a plug or battery over to the National Mall at the corner of 3rd Street, NW and Pennsylvania Ave. The electronics recycling and asset recovery company, Redemtech, has been chosen to do the collection event for Congress. They are also TechSoup's refurbishment partner for our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI).

All collected equipment with data storage will be swept clean, and all equipment that is old or broken will be end-of-life recycled without being exported, incinerated, or being sent to a landfill. The event will have something additional that many e-waste collection events don't have — a robust charitable reuse component.

Redemtech has been working with the Green the Capitol office at the US House of Representatives, whose mission is to reduce carbon emissions, save energy, and make the House a model of sustainability. Congressional staffers from the House E-Waste Working Group have also been involved in the project. They were very receptive to Redemtech's request to optimize the charitable reuse aspect of the event.

As a major asset recovery company, Redemtech readily champions electronics reuse, often citing recent Gartner statistics on the topic:

• Last year American companies replaced 40 million computers.
• More than 75 percent of replaced corporate PCs are four or fewer years old and could be put to good use if refurbished.
• However, only a small fraction was donated to charity — and most were not even reused.

…and also TechSoup's stats on the digital divide:

• U.S. nonprofits need 4.2 million computers.
• The digital divide among low-income American families is in the range of 10.5 million PCs.

As a result, newer equipment from the Capitol Hill Electronics Collection Day will be refurbished and donated to a Washington DC–area charity, Hortons Kids, and other reusable items will be resold with proceeds used to donate additional equipment to other charities through TechSoup's RCI program.

It may be a good thing that the US doesn’t have a national electronics recycling law yet. The 27 countries of the European Union do have one called the WEEE Directive and it has had very little support for reuse.

If the first Capitol Hill Electronics Collection Day is a harbinger of things to come, we may be able to do better than that. I fervently hope that this type of collection event becomes the norm rather than the exception and just perhaps, a model for the law of the land.

Photo: Andrew Bossi, CC license