Last updated April 12, 2019
Butler County in the United States is offering its citizens the chance to recycle their old cell phones and other electronic goods. This coming Saturday, the county is staging a recycling event as a way of disposing of used cell phones and other unwanted electrical items as part of what is intended to be an ongoing scheme, with similar events to be held on every second and third Saturday of the month from now up until the end of September.
The recycling of old cell phones and other electronics is “expensive and labor intensive”, according to the coordinator of the Butler County Recycling and Solid Waste District, Anne Fiehrer Flaig. The county program costs somewhere between 25 and 27,000 US dollars per year. “Part of the challenge is they are made up of a lot of components in them,” Flaig says. “They need human interaction – they’re hard to take apart. And they cannot be meaningfully recycled without being deconstructed.” Electrical goods contain elements such as chromium, copper and gold, with some older electronics such as televisions and computer monitors also containing cadmium, lead and mercury, which can be highly toxic to the environment. “We want to provide practical, convenient solutions for residents to manage these items thoughtfully,” Flaig adds.
Anything from old cell phones to televisions, monitors, copiers, fax machines, cables, compact discs and much more besides will be accepted at the event, which will be open from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon at the Butler County Engineer’s Office on Saturday.