North Carolina recently passed a law to meet the national call of becoming more environmentally friendly. This new law, effective July 1, is a landfill ban that forbids the disposal of television sets and various types of computer equipment. The law makes it mandatory to recycle these electronics at facilities dedicated to this purpose.
The new policy, Session Law 2010-67, was created in order to help prevent harmful materials, such as mercury and cadmium, from seeping into the ground water near landfills or becoming airborne. Also, the new law allows useful parts of the hardware to be recycled and re-used to make new items.
Although lawmakers developed the ban with concerns to environmental impact, students may find it troublesome to have to transport TV sets and computers to a recycling facility—most of which are located near Durham and the Research Triangle Park area.
“Although it may be troublesome to find facilities to recycle because we are in Raleigh,” Sofonias Mehari, senior in biochemistry, said, “I think that [recycling electronics] is the best way to dispose of them because there may be some harmful metals in the computers and TVs that would not be beneficial for the environment.”
In response to the law, the N.C. State Waste Reduction and Recycling Office and the University Surplus Office have arranged services for students to easily dispose of their electronics on campus.
“We haven’t accepted electronics for a long time,” Nessa Stone, operations director of Waste Reduction and Recycling, said. “On every dumpster, there is a sign telling students what can and can’t be disposed in them. The office does do pickups for students by special request to their costumer service line.
“A lot of the time though, students just leave TVs and such by the dumpster and we pick them up from there. From there, we work with our affiliate University Surplus to take them to Synergy Recycling.”
Although students have all these resources available to them, many may remain unaware. The office of Waste Reduction and Recycling is working to build an Awareness Campaign for the University this summer to allow students to educate themselves on the hazards they inflict on the environment.
The University’s Sustainability Office also holds an electronics recycling drive twice a year, where students can bring in any electronics they need to dispose of, including TVs, computers, and according to Stone, “basically anything with a cord on it.”
These drives occur at the beginning of the fall term and near the end of the spring term, when students move out of the residence halls; a prime time for the University to pick up recyclable electronics.
