The irresponsible behavior of college students has been stereotyped for generations. Sometimes these young people are away from their parents for the first time and are more focused on their school work and social interests than on being responsible members of the communities in which they rent off-campus housing.

One aspect of this community irresponsibility is that when college students move out of their rental housing, they tend to throw out large quantities of furniture and other possessions that they used during the school year. One common item that college students to throw away when they leave is their television sets, being inexpensive and too heavy to move.

Because the law requiring the environmental disposal of televisions was only enacted in January of 2013, one part of the problem is that many students have not been informed that they can no longer throw television sets away on the curb with other household waste. The job of informing students about the change in this city ordinance should have fallen to landlords, but it is unlikely that many have sent out this mid-year letter. To cover for this failure in communication between landlords and students, the respective schools could have been responsible to tell students about the change in the law.

Whether out of irresponsibility or ignorance for the current law, when students moved out of their off campus housing in January and May, two television sets were left on the curb on my street and were not taken away by city sanitation. During the months that these television sets sat on the curbside the glass tubes of both televisions were broken, creating an unsightly as well as dangerous problem for permanent residents.

The Problem

On January 1st of 2013, the city of Pittsburgh instituted a state law that electronic waste should no longer be disposed of in city landfills. On the face of it, this seems like a simple law intended to preserve the environment and promote recycling. Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh city plan for implementation was to announce the law publicly, and then simply no longer pick up electronics, computer monitors, and televisions at the curbside. The idea was that people who sold consumer electronics would also be responsible for receiving old equipment back and recycling it. For people who owned equipment that they wished to dispose of, there would be two locations for disposal, one within the city limits at retail store called Construction Junction, and the second about twenty minutes outside of the city at a waste disposal center called eLoop.

The problem is that there are many people who live within the city who are unable to drive heavy and potentially dangerous electronic waste to recycling centers and who find it easier to dump this waste illegally instead of following the new law. Worse, among Pittsburgh residents who are able to legally dispose of electronic waste, not every resident of Pittsburgh is responsible enough to bring electronics to a recycling center. The result of these two groups’ actions is that a large percentage of electronic waste is still winding up in dumpsters and ultimately in landfills, and not fulfilling the mandate of the law.

The Disposal of One Television

This spring, I had a large console television set that I needed to dispose of, but I was aware that if I placed my television out on the curb, it would not be taken by city sanitation. I also had the problem that this large television set would not fit in my small car. My solution was to rent a trailer so that I could bring my television to the local collection center, Construction Junction, for proper disposal. After having loaded my television into the rental trailer, I had extra room and I chose to load two other television sets that had been sitting on my block for several months. One of these television sets had its glass broken. I called Construction Junction and spoke with several of their employees, all of whom told me that they would accept this broken television set. I felt that by helping to properly dispose of these television sets, I was doing the right thing environmentally and being a responsible member of my community.

Arriving at Construction Junction with the three television sets, I was shocked when the loading dock worker there, Kevin, said that he would accept my television set, and one small television set that I had picked up on the curb, but that he would not accept the large television set I had picked up that had broken glass. He said that he had the right to refuse any television brought to him and that the large set would be too dangerous for him and his staff to handle.

I told Kevin that I was stuck. I had no plan for what to do with this television other than to drop it off at Construction Junction. I told Kevin that I had a rental trailer that I needed to return that evening and that I had no idea of what to do with the broken television other than to leave it there. I told him that this television was not mine, and that I was just being a good samaritan by loading it in my trailer and bringing it to a collection center. I asked him what I should do with the television.

Kevin told me that he didn’t care what I did with the television set. He said that it was my decision to pick up the television set and my decision to bring it over, and he had the last word to reject anything at the loading dock. I asked Kevin if I could dispose of the television in the dumpster there and he told me I could not.

At this point I went inside to talk with a manager. The person at the checkout counter paged the manager and this same guy Kevin came in from the loading dock. He said, “It’s me again!,” mocking me. I asked Kevin again what I should do with that television and he said that it wasn’t his responsibility and I just needed to get that television off of Construction Junction property. I didn’t yell at Kevin, but at the same time I don’t feel that I handled the situation as well as I could have. I squealed my car tires as I left the parking lot.

What options did I have at this point? One idea I had was to drive back across Pittsburgh in rush hour traffic so that I put that now increasingly broken television in front of my neighbor’s house where I picked it up. I rejected this idea, since there’s another neighbor’s child who plays on our block, and she could get cut in all of that broken glass. I also didn’t think that I would make it back to my block and be able to return the rental trailer in time after just having signed the contract that I would return it that day.

Leaving the Construction Junction parking lot, I had an Arlo Guthrie moment, having been rejected at the dump, and now driving away in my VW micro-bus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, looking for another place to dump the garbage! Actually, I had a Toyota and broom, but the sentiment was the same. People who are turned away at a dump probably don’t have second plan for what they should do with their garbage.

What Probably Happens to Most Electronic Waste

My solution was to find an open construction dumpster and throw the broken television set in it. I know that this was a bad idea for at least three reasons:

First, I know that I was illegally dumping in someone else’s dumpster. If the person who rented that dumpster had seen what I was doing, I could have been legally charged.

Second, based on what I later learned about the potential of the person who rented this dumpster being fined $25, I am now even more sorry about what I did.

Third, there was the physical risk of my pushing the broken, six foot long console television over the top edge of the seven foot high dumpster, with pieces of glass falling off of it. I had no gloves and I was wearing a short sleeve shirt. I did manage to get the television into the dumpster, but I also cut both of my arms in the process. I did have a broom with me, and with my arms dripping blood, I then spent the next fifteen minutes sweeping up broken glass off of the street where it had fallen off of the television. I then returned the trailer and washed out my cuts in the U-Haul rental bathroom.

One Better Informed Waste Disposal Employee

The next day, I called Construction Junction and spoke with a manager there named Ben Lloyd. The first question I asked Ben was if they accepted broken television sets. Of the four people who I had spoken with at Construction Junction, Ben was the first person who made the distinction that they accept televisions that don’t work, but that it is their choice to reject televisions that have broken glass. Ben and I spoke for the better part of an hour, and there were several important points that he made during our conversation.

First, Ben told me that he would make it a point to educate every other member of his staff regarding Construction Junction’s policy to not accept televisions with broken glass so that they can correctly inform customers of their policies. Ben agreed that having his staff give people the correct information would be an important first step in not having customers bring televisions that Construction Junction would not accept.
Next, I asked Ben what I should have done in that situation with the television set with the broken glass. Ben was the first and only person that I spoke with who knew the answer. There is a ecycling center in Plum, called eLoop, that will accept television sets with broken glass. If Kevin at the loading dock had told me about this other recycling center, I would have been annoyed at having to haul the television all the way out to Plum, but at least I would have disposed of the television without breaking the law. Ben said that he would make it a policy at Construction Junction for people at the loading dock to know about eLoop and to offer customers that address if they brought equipment Construction Junction would not accept. Ben gave me eLoop’s contact information.

eLoop
625 Plum Industrial Park Pittsburgh, PA 15239
(724) 519-7646
http://www.eloopllc.com/

Calling eLoop, I was told that they would reluctantly accept a television with broken glass, although personally I would want to talk with a manager at eLoop to verify this before I drove from Oakland to Plum only to have the a television rejected there as well.
Next, I made a suggestion to Ben that his loading dock workers offer their customers large cardboard boxes when they brought in televisions with broken glass. Construction Junction could give their customers the option of putting any broken glass into a box themselves and taping the box closed. This would allow Construction Junction to accept televisions with broken glass with no risk to the dock workers. Ben told me that this was a good idea and that he would talk with other people at Construction Junction about implementing it.
The final point that Ben made was that I may have caused the person whose dumpster I used to dispose of the television set to receive a fine for the improper disposal of electronic waste. This is also the reason why Kevin would not let me throw my television in the Construction Junction dumpster. If Kevin had told me about this fine, I would have sought some solution to dispose of the television other than putting it in the first open dumpster that I found.

Although Ben was understanding and gave me some good information, he still didn’t have a good answer for what I should have done with the television, since I needed to return the trailer in only an hour-and-a-half.

Management Agrees That Staff Mistakes Were Made, But Also Blames Customers

The following business day I called Howard Wein, President of the Board of Directors for Construction Junction. I told him what had happened with Kevin, and about my discussion with Ben Lloyd. I also told him what had happened with me and the television. At first Howard was patient, letting me tell him the entire story. There were several points that came out of my conversation with Howard.

Howard agreed with Ben that every member of his staff should make clear to customers that they would accept televisions that didn’t work, but not televisions with broken glass. Howard told me that I was at least partly responsible, since I had been unclear to his staff in my description of the television set. Before trying to dispose of this one television, I had no idea there were levels of broken television. I did make the point to Howard that the large television that my neighbor had left down the block from my house did not have broken glass the week before when I had talked with his staff, and so I would not have even known to mention it. Howard did not have an answer for this.
What Howard did say is that he would check the wording on the Construction Junction web site to make sure that this point was made clear to other people in the future. Prior to my telling him, Howard did not know that eLoop accepted televisions with broken glass. I am not sure if Howard’s modification of Construction Junction’s web site was only to clarify their policy of not caring where customers went with televisions with broken glass, or if this update would also include information redirecting customers to eLoop.
I mentioned to Howard the risk that Kevin was making by sending people away from Construction Junction with equipment that they could get hurt on. If it was Kevin’s logic that he would not accept the television based on the risk of his staff getting hurt on the broken glass, there was some chance that I could get hurt moving that television, as did happen. I pointed out to Howard that this was a case of Willful Negligence on the part of his employee. Howard said that it was was my decision to help in my community, it was my decision to put the television on the trailer and my decision to bring it to Construction Junction. He also said that it was my decision to dispose of the television in the dumpster and that that is why I got cut. Whereas I did make all of these decisions, Howard also demonstrated that he does not know the meaning of Willful Negligence:

WILLFUL NEGLIGENCE: Intentional performance of an unreasonable act in disregard of a known risk, making it highly probable that harm will be caused. Willful negligence usually involves a conscious indifference to the consequences.

I think it would be good judgement for the staff of Construction Junction to accept televisions with broken glass just to assure that customers would not get injured and risk suing them.
I did mention to Howard that I felt that Construction Junction was probably being a bad neighbor to the people in the surrounding residential neighborhoods because I was probably not the only person whom they had sent away and who had found someplace close to their location to dispose of something they rejected. He told me that this wasn’t true, because people would get dumpsters because they needed them and wouldn’t think about Construction Junction and this happening to them. Yet another poor argument from Howard.
Howard made clear to me that even if Kevin had been impolite to me at the loading dock, the the outcome would have been the same. No matter what I had been told on the phone by other staff members, if the person at the dock did not want to accept an item, theirs was the final word. It is my experience that Howard accepted no responsibility for any of the actions of his staff. This was a case of turtles all the way up as well as down.
Howard also told me that he had read an article in the New York Times that described that despite the environmental laws, televisions were not being recycled and instead were winding up in landfills because of the difficulty of correct disposal. Wouldn’t this be an argument in my favor?
Finally, I asked Howard what he would have done if he had been in that situation. What Howard told me is that he would never be in that situation. Howard told me that he never would have picked the television up off the sidewalk because he would not have been a good samaritan. He told me that he would have contacted the city and told them to call the neighbor who put out the television set. I made the point that him not being a good samaritan said more about him than it did about me. He agreed that it did. I was now completely clear that I wouldn’t pick Howard for my side of a debate team. Howard said he had to go before I was able to make the point that the television could have been put out by exiting students and maybe the landlord didn’t even know about it. I also didn’t get to ask Howard what I should have done if the people helping me getting my television down the stairs from the second floor had broken the glass.

Recycling at the State Level

Howard did give me the number for Waste Management, the state Department of Environmental Protection. The person I spoke with there was Bob Popichak, and he was also patient listening to my story, which got longer with every phone call I made. The outcome of our conversation was:

When I asked Bob what should I do with a television with a broken glass he said tellingly, “I don’t know.” To me this was disturbing. Bob told me this was a state law not to put televisions in the landfill and that the details of the program had not all been worked out with the city, including what to do with televisions with broken glass.
I told Bob that I had spoken with eLoop and they had told me that they would accept a television with broken glass. Like Howard, this was news to him. He said that they would only be doing this, “out of the goodness of their hearts.” Again, I would re-verify eLoop’s willingness to accept a television with broken glass before renting another trailer and driving to their site in Plum.
Bob told me that eLoop would only accept a television with broken glass because they were a Recycling Center and could recycle the glass itself. He made it clear that this was different from Construction Junction, which was a Collection Center. Prior to this conversation, I did not understand the distinction between a Recycling Center and a Collection Center. Bob told me that Construction Junction’s motivation to collect televisions was the profit they made from reselling electronic waste to eLoop. He pointed out that Construction Junction probably couldn’t make anything on a television with a broken tube or missing circuit boards.

Lack of City Policy for Electronic Waste Disposal

The next day, I was contacted by Shawn Wigle, the city of Pittsburgh’s Recycling Supervisor. When I spoke with Shawn, I gave him an abbreviated version of the story, only covering the names and their important points. Shawn was patient and understanding, but he also did not have an idea what to do with televisions with broken glass. The outcome of our conversation was:

Like Bob, when I asked where I should bring a television with broken glass, Shawn said, “I don’t know.” Shawn said that at the city level they also did not have a policy for what to do with a television in that condition. He said that this program had been imposed on them by the state and the city didn’t have an answer, but that he would get back to me. I am still waiting for his return call, now several weeks later.
Shawn did recommend that if I saw a television with broken glass and I was concerned that someone could get hurt, I could wrap it in cardboard. This was a good practical solution, an idea that might have even allowed Kevin to accept the television at Construction Junction.
At the end of our phone call, Shawn said that if there were something on the street that was a risk to public safety, my other option was to call the City’s 311 helpline. I could report the problem and the city would pick up the television. Shawn was willing to send someone to pick up the television then, but he didn’t know that it had been a week between my experience at Construction Junction and when he had finally called. I told him that the television had already been disposed of. I didn’t get to ask Shawn if a television with smashed glass that was picked up by the city would be correctly recycled.

OPDC Has Not Resolved the Issues of Electronic Waste Recycling

I then contacted Wanda Wilson at the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation (OPDC). At the end of every school year, OPDC provides dumpsters around Oakland for departing students to get rid of broken furniture and other garbage. I contacted Wanda in case she wasn’t aware that OPDC could get fined if students threw out televisions in their dumpsters. Wanda thanked me for my call. The outcome of our conversation was:

At the beginning of our call, Wanda was not aware of the fines for improper disposal of television sets in dumpsters and asked me how much they would be for each television. I told her that I didn’t know the dollar amount but that I did know it was a per-instance fine.
Wanda told me that OPDC had contacts at the various schools and that they could use email as well as text messaging to contact students and provide them with the information that they could not legally dump television sets in dumpsters. Wanda said they could also inform the students what the proper waste disposal method was, although she said she would need to think about what this would be. Wanda did say it was likely that there would be signs placed on the dumpsters to help avoid the per-instance fines for dumping televisions.
Wanda was not aware that Construction Junction did not accept televisions with broken glass, and she was also not aware that they sold electronic waste to eLoop for profit. I suggested to Wanda that OPDC find a city junk collector who would be willing to drive the streets to pick up televisions and bring them to eLoop. Wanda said that was a good idea and that she would have one of her staff members look into it.
By the end of our conversation Wanda acted as if she was already aware of the fines for dumping television sets in dumpsters and said to me that she would look into whether OPDC would be responsible for the fines or whether the students who dumped the televisions could be made responsible. I have no idea how OPDC would make the students responsible, seeing as most students throw out their televisions at the end of the semester and then leave. After contacting a dumpster company, I emailed Wanda back with the information that the fine was $25 for each television improperly disposed of.

In my experience, Wanda Wilson has been consistently indefinite in every conversation I have had with her. It is yet to be seen if OPDC will actually help collect and recycle televisions at the end of the semester. Although it is likely that OPDC will put signs on every dumpster they supply asking students not to throw away televisions, this doesn’t answer the question of what the students should do with them.

In the best case scenario, students could line up monitors outside the dumpsters and then there could be a television and monitor pickup at every dumpster each day before the monitors get broken. Then ideally, someone with a truck could drive them out to Plum when enough televisions and monitors had been collected. Whatever the cost of renting a truck and having someone drive them over, this would likely be less than the cumulative fines for the television sets.

Disposal and Recycling Company Policy

I then called one of Pittsburgh’s largest dumpster companies to find out what the fine would be for each monitor. I called Penn Waste Dumpsters of Pittsburgh:

Penn Waste Dumpsters of Pittsburgh
412 567-4192
http://www.dumpsterrentalpittsburgh.com/

The woman that I spoke with there said that they charge $25 per television that is thrown in one of their dumpsters. She described that this wasn’t really a fine, but a fee they charge to sort out televisions from other garbage from their dumpsters. Based on what she told me I would imagine that other dumpster companies charge about the same amount to sort out televisions or other electronic waste.

I then called eLoop Recycler, as recommended by Howard Wien days before:

eLoop Recycler
625 Plum Industrial Park Pittsburgh, PA 15239
(724) 519-7646
http://www.eloopllc.com/

The woman that I spoke with there, Tess, told me that eLoop does not charge for the consumer drop off of televisions and monitors. She told me that eLoop does have a service where they will pick up electronic waste from commercial organizations for a fee. She told me that they do not pay for the drop-off of scrap monitors as I had hoped, even though she did confirm that Construction Junction is getting paid for their electronic waste.

Bill Peduto’s Opinion

Finally speaking with Bill Peduto, Councilman and democratic nominee for Mayor of Pittsburgh, he was visibly surprised by the cavalier attitude that Construction Junction showed in sending me away with a broken and clearly dangerous television set to dispose of. When I briefed him on the difficulties that I had had in properly disposing of a television here in Pittsburgh, his comment was, “Broken televisions will wind up on the hillsides.” Although Peduto made no statement about what the city of Pittsburgh will do to correct this problem, I do hope that our short conversation will put this issue on the city’s list of problems to be addressed.

The Bigger Problem

It is easy for legislators to sign a policy into law without thinking out the implications of the law being carried out. Recycling is a great idea, but how should someone who does not have a car to drive to a recycling center follow this law? How should people without the money to pay for recycling follow this law? And what motivation would a transient population, common in the city of Pittsburgh, have to be responsible to the community and recycle? Without the city providing a solution for the disposal of electronic waste that is as easy for residents as garbage disposal, recycling laws will not be followed. Nowhere is this more evident than in Oakland, an area of Pittsburgh heavily populated by college students, a group that frequently lacks cars, has little extra money, and frequently lives in a community for only a short time. It is clear that those who promoted electronic recycling did not think of Oakland in Pittsburgh when they signed this law into effect.

Final Thoughts

I live on a single block here in Pittsburgh, and along this street alone, over the past few months there have been four televisions sitting on the sidewalk that no one has picked up. If this problem has happened on my block, it must also be happening on thousands of other residential streets all around Pittsburgh. I can also imagine that the problem of what to do with televisions with broken glass must be playing out all over the city, in one way or another. I am a proactive person, and so I am generally ahead of the curve, but it is shocking to me that now six months after this law was put into effect, no one at the state or city level has a definitive answer for what the right thing to do with a television that has broken glass is. Based on my experience with uninformed officials at every level, it seems highly unlikely to me that the majority of televisions with broken glass are finding their way to recycling centers. There needs to be a better solution than expecting every resident who has a television set to deal with the obnoxious dock staff at Construction Junction, or worse drive their set all the way out to the city Plum to deliver it to eLoop.

It also seems unlikely that residents will collect their electronic waste and bring it out to Zero Waste Pittsburgh’s infrequent collection events four times a year. http://www.zerowastepittsburgh.org As I have discussed earlier, college students here in Oakland may have only a very limited time to be out of their off-campus rental housing, and frequently do not have the transportation to drive to these recycling events.

My Idea

The city of Pittsburgh could pay the city’s scrappers a per pound or per television fee to pick up television sets off the streets. The scrappers’ motivation to pick up televisions would be the same as their motivation for picking up scrap steel or scrap copper as they already do. If there were money to be made, it is even likely that the scrappers would take televisions out of dumpsters for their scrap value.

The rate that the city would pay would need to be carefully set. If the price were too low, it would not be worth the scrappers time to drive around the streets to pick up televisions for recycling. If the price were too high, there is a potential of televisions being stolen out of people’s homes for their scrap value, as abandoned homes are sometimes broken into for their copper value.

To implement this idea, the city could utilize the drop off centers currently used for the collection of tires to accept television sets and computer monitors. The benefit to the city is that televisions and monitors would be properly disposed of for less than the cost of having city employees drive the streets to pick up televisions and monitors. The benefit to the scrappers would be that they could make extra money for recycling yet another resource.

The city of Pittsburgh could become an eLoop partner, as Construction Junction is now, and eLoop would pick up televisions directly from these centers. As a person who has worked to clear garbage off of two hillsides here in Pittsburgh (a likely location for these televisions to be dumped), the cost for this solution is low, and the benefits for every member of the Pittsburgh community are high.

Visiting eLoop

After the disposal problems I had with the first three televisions, I decided to visit eLoop in person to better understand the recycling process. For garbage day this week, one of my college student neighbors put out another television. Rather than see this television sit on the curb, get it’s glass broken, and repeat the problems I had two weeks ago, I decided to put this television in my car and drive it out to eLoop myself.

eLoop is located in an industrial area of Plum, far from the center of Pittsburgh. According to Google Maps, eLoop is twenty-four minutes from my home in Oakland. Driving midday in mild rain, it took over forty-five minutes to get there. Eventually finding eLoop, I drove around the back to the unmarked loading dock and a helpful young man took the television out of the back of my vehicle. I chatted with him for a few moments, asking if I could see where they disassembled the equipment, but he told me I wasn’t allowed into the back of the building. Looking in the garage door, I saw televisions, computer monitors, and computers piled shoulder deep in the entire disassembly area. Just outside the loading dock door there was a roll-off dumpster almost entirely filled with stripped computer cases. There were no were no other customers at the loading dock.

Going around to the front of the building, I went into the office and was greeted by Tess, the person I had spoken with on the phone the week before. Although the television that I had brought today did not have a broken glass, I asked her if she could confirm that they would accept a television with broken glass. Tess confirmed what she had told me on the phone, that they would accept a television with broken glass, but reluctantly. In a couple of minutes we were joined by another eLoop employee named Zach, who instructed me on the correct handling of a television with broken glass:

Zach explained that if a television had broken glass, the glass itself should be collected and either put out with garbage or put out in a dumpster. He explained there was nothing illegal about putting broken glass into a dumpster. Zach then said that the rest of the television could then be brought to eLoop and they would accept it.
Later speaking with Dave Mazza, executive director of the Pennsylvania Resources Council (PRC) Western Division, he added the clarification that the glass in television picture tubes contained lead and could be disposed of, but not be recycled with consumer glass. This television glass could only be recycled at a certified electronic waste disposal facility like eLoop.

After a few minutes, the owner of eLoop, Ned Eldridge, came to the counter to talk with me about recycling electronic waste. The important information that Ned shared with me was:

Pennsylvania is the twenty-sixth state in the US to start an electronic waste recycling program, and for every state that has gone through this process, the second year has been difficult. He felt that the problem started at the top with ambiguously written laws and state interpretations of these laws that he felt were not well thought out. Based on the way he stated this view, I can only guess that the particular interpretation of these laws here in Pennsylvania makes his job as a recycler more difficult.
After telling Ned an abbreviated version the saga of my getting rid of a television with a broken glass and mentioning several of the people I had spoken with, Ned told me that there were several other collection centers in Pittsburgh other than Construction Junction, as listed on the eLoop web site. One of these collection centers is in the South Hills, closer to Oakland than eLoop in Plum. This collection center is:

Michael Brothers Hauling & Recycling
5331 McAnulty Rd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15236
412-835-6428
www.michaelbrothershauling.com

Ned told me that the reason why these recycling centers would not accept televisions with broken glass is that they did not have the correct equipment to handle them. Ned said that there at eLoop they had a machine that could pick up a broken television and lift it into a box that they had especially for the purpose of recycling. In this way, no personnel actually needed to handle the broken glass and risk the potential of becoming injured. I was pleased when Ned told me about this special equipment and I feel that every collection center, including Construction Junction, should have this available.
I asked Ned if the reason why Construction Junction would not accept the television with the broken glass is because they couldn’t make a profit from it. Ned said that Construction Junction actually “makes only pennies” from electronic recycling, suggesting that it may actually be costing them money after considering employee time and storage space in their facility. Ned said that the amount that collection centers or companies get paid for electronic waste varies based on what they offer. He said that computers earn a higher rate, but that televisions and computer monitors do not earn as much due to the difficulty with recycling their lead.
As we closed our conversation, I asked him about my idea for Pittsburgh scrappers getting paid to pick up televisions. Ned told me that scrappers have a bad reputation in the recycling community. He said that the only reason why steel and copper recycling was effective was because there were scrapyards that handed out money to these people every day for bringing in truckloads of material. Ned said that there would need to be money handed out for scrappers to bring televisions into collection centers. I feel that this may still be a viable option when compared to the cost of the city having a separate collection for picking up televisions.

As I drove away, I understood that recycling is difficult. In the forty minutes in heavy traffic that it took to get back to my home, I wondered how the tens of thousands of students and other residents without cars would get their televisions from the center of Pittsburgh to the remote location of eLoop. I also thought about the number of officials that I had spoken with from the state and city levels who did not know that eLoop offered the service of handling televisions with broken glass. I am happy that eLoop is there to do electronic recycling, and it is clear to me that more needs to be done to complete the cycle from the consumer to the recycler.

It is not a reasonable expectation that any city resident would go through the abuse that I went through at Construction Junction, or the trouble that I went through to find the information to correctly dispose of electronic waste. What needs to happen is that the city needs to do electronic waste collection as it does recycling collection or it is inevitable that this material will be dumped illegally.

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Better Answers Needed For Electronic Waste Collection

Table Of Contents:

One Block in Oakland

The Problem

The Disposal of One Television

What Probably Happens to Most Electronic Waste

One Better Informed Waste Disposal Employee

Management Agrees That Staff Mistakes Were Made, But Also Blames Customers

Recycling at the State Level

Lack of City Policy for Electronic Waste Disposal

OPDC Has Not Resolved the Issues of Electronic Waste Recycling

Disposal and Recycling Company Policy

Bill Peduto’s Opinion

The Bigger Problem

Final Thoughts

My Idea

Visiting eLoop

One Block In Oakland

The Problem

The Disposal of One Television

What Probably Happens to Most Electronic Waste

One Better Informed Waste Disposal Employee

Management Agrees That Staff Mistakes Were Made, But Also Blames Customers

Recycling at the State Level

Lack of City Policy for Electronic Waste Disposal

OPDC Has Not Resolved the Issues of Electronic Waste Recycling

Disposal and Recycling Company Policy

Bill Peduto’s Opinion

The Bigger Problem

Final Thoughts

My Idea

Visiting eLoop