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45 Degrees North: Spring Cleaning And Piles Of E-waste [1]

['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder']

Date: 2024-03-29

For many, spring cleaning starts once it’s warm enough to open all the windows. But I’m only giving our house a lick and a promise. Everything will get a deep cleaning when we repaint the interior this summer. So for now, I’m channeling my nesting urges into sorting stuff – stuff to keep, stuff to repair, stuff to donate or give away, stuff to haul to our rural trash transfer station, stuff the transfer station can’t take, and stuff I don’t know what to do about.

We had a chance to get rid of things from that last group in December. Our county announced it was holding a free e-cycling event where area residents could dispose of electronics safely and responsibly. Perhaps more accurately, the county hosted the event at the fairgrounds, but it was run by an IT asset disposition company headquartered across the state.

E-waste collection events are not a regular occurance in my part of rural northern Wisconsin. This was a chance for folks to get rid of stuff that’s been piling up for several years – old cell phones, TVs and monitors, computers and laptops, tablets, modems and routers, DVD and Blu-Ray players, gaming systems, satellite receivers, desktop printers, scanners and fax machines, and more.

The chief of our volunteer fire department headed to town early the day of the e-waste event with a load of old electronics from our station. He arrived at the fairgrounds before the official start time, sailed through, and headed back to our station at the edge of the county having accomplished a much-needed task.

Bill and I headed in a couple hours later. Big mistake. When we reached the fairgrounds, we found vehicles lined up nearly to the center of town – vehicles loaded with kitchen appliances and other stuff as well as electronics. We got in line, and as we inched forward I monitored facebook posts from the shotgun seat. People who arrived before us and had been in line for 90 minutes estimated they had another hour to wait. One friend posted: “While I appreciate this free event, there’s got to be a better way to recycle electronics. This is probably why you see TVs, computers and more dumped on forest lands and left with properties being sold. It’s great to see that all the people here in line didn’t dump their stuff or just leave it.”

Before we finally turned off the main drag and were in sight of the fairground entrance, Bill and I had one of those marital conversations based on hope rather than fact. I opined it must be like voting, where if you’re in line when the polls close you still get to vote. We just needed to stay in line, right? And weren’t we glad we used the bathroom before leaving home?

Three trucks away from the fairground gate: That’s how close we were when we saw our county board of supervisors chairman moving down the queue on foot. He had come out to count vehicles in line but instead found himself telling driver after driver that the dumpsters were all full and there was no way to take anything more.

The following week the county board’s Solid Waste committee was briefed on the event: 400 vehicles were unloaded, and another 150 were turned away.

The World Health Organization says e-waste is the fastest growing solid waste stream in the world. In 2019, an estimated 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste were produced globally, but only 17.4% was documented as collected and recycled. And that’s a problem. E-waste can release as many as 1,000 different chemical substances into the environment, including harmful neurotoxicants like lead.

People accustomed to curbside trash pickup probably have trouble disposing of e-waste and other hazardous materials, too. But in rural areas without municipal water treatment and monitoring systems, we can end up drinking bad choices that leach into the groundwater. It took years to (mostly) overcome the rural practice of dumping trash in the Back 40. It’s not that long ago that rural leaders said we couldn’t afford solid waste transfer stations and fought to keep burning solid waste at township dumps. If you want another opinion about burning pits, ask a Gulf War veteran.

Too often, technological advances outpace planning for reclamation of the waste created. My local volunteer fire department had a drum of PFAS-containing firefighting foam in the station for years waiting for the state to develop and implement a plan for safe disposal. It finally got picked up in 2023.

Before I moved to northern Wisconsin in 1986, there were concerns about a plan to use the Wolf River batholith as a nuclear waste depository. Despite strong opposition, this area with its granite geology may still be considered a leading candidate for future disposal of radioactive waste. It has to go somewhere, I suppose. One of the arguments I remember hearing was that this area doesn’t have earthquakes. Guess what: On January 7 of this year, that area experienced a 2.5-magnitude earthquake. If the proposed site has been operational, what impact would that have had?

I’m as guilty of not looking far enough ahead as every other cellphone-toting person. Perhaps more so, according to some, because I drive a hybrid Prius. We bought it in 2014 to replace our 16-year-old Ford Escort. By 2035 it’s estimated there will be between 1.3 million and 6.7 million worn-out EV hybrid and plug-in vehicle batteries in the U.S. Recycling and reuse programs may not have sufficient volume now to make them profitable, but estimates say that the global “second-life” battery business will be generating $3 billion a year in revenue by 2035. In the meantime, those batteries can be used for energy storage at solar or wind-power generating plants or remanufactured for re-use in vehicles.

Our hybrid batteries have outlived their 8-year/100,000-mile warranty, I’m happy to say. I’m even happier to know the nickel-metal hydride batteries used in most conventional hybrids are considered safe for landfills, but unlikely to end up there. The primary metals recovered are nickel, copper and iron. The principal rare earths are neodymium and lanthanum. What can’t be recycled is consumed in the recycling process.

The conventional 12-volt lead-acid batteries used in our pickup truck and lawnmower cannot be incinerated or sent to a landfill in Wisconsin. So retailers who sell new batteries accept old ones as part of a state-mandated recycling program.

Wisconsin households are not required to recycle dry-cell batteries like the ones used in toys, flashlights and hearing aids. But there are risks to putting non-alkaline batteries in the trash. If you have to store dry-cell batteries until they can be recycled, reduce the fire hazard by taping the ends with clear packing tape or putting each battery in an individual plastic bag. Then store them in a non-metal, leakproof container with a lid, like a plastic ice cream bucket. When my husband got hearing aids last year, he chose rechargeables so we wouldn’t have to mess with changing those tiny batteries or storing and disposing of the spent ones.

We don’t use many hazardous chemicals, insecticides or pesticides (I make an exception for buckthorn). When buying anything like that you really have to ask yourself if you can find room to store the unused portion for at least two years. Because our county only hosts a Clean Sweep event in even-numbered years. So in August we’ll be able to get rid of some household hazardous waste. Like many in rural areas, we have no choice but to haul it ourselves. I’m glad we have a pickup truck for doing that. I wouldn’t want to have that stuff shift or spill in my car. The National Pesticide Information Center has some important safety information about carrying pesticides in your vehicle here.

We don’t use many prescription medications, either, but I found some prescribed for our dog while cleaning the bathroom. There’s a secure drop box in the lobby of the sheriff’s department. I can get rid of those next time I’m in town.

My county has not announced a 2024 e-waste collection date, and it probably won’t happen without sponsorship from someone like that asset disposition company. So I guess for now our best bet is to haul it to the city next time I go there. We paid to recycle a box at a big box store a few years back, and hope that’s still an option. I really don’t want to keep moving piles of this stuff.

What the other 150 vehicles that didn’t get through the gate at last year’s e-waste collection event did with stuff, I can’t say. I’m sure some things got snuck into trash that went to rural transfer stations. I would bet other stuff got piled up where it was before.

Is it hoarding if you keep stuff you can’t get rid of responsibly?

Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.

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