Good Men Project: MyFoxBOSTON.com

In addition, TTF became the first organization in the world to sign the Electronic Waste Code Of EthicsTM, a global set of standards developed by Christopher Swain. The Electronic Waste (e-waste) Code Of Ethics includes a mandate to educate youth about the global problem of Electronic Waste as well as a pledge to prevent e-waste from being dumped or deposited into solid waste landfills or incinerators. It also requires signatories to ensure that their electronics are not dumped in developing countries, or processed by child and/or prison labor.

Over the last several years, in partnership with Cedarbrook Middle School and Christopher Swain, TTF has hosted Ethical Electronics Recycling EventsTM that have diverted nearly 50,000 pounds of electronic waste from landfills, incinerators, and dumps in the developing world. For more information please contact: Sarah RobbGrieco at sarah@ttfwatershed.org or 215.208.1613. For more information on the Electronic Waste Code of EthicsTM, please visit: www.toxtour.org.

Below are a few pictures from the event. You can view more in this Facebook photo album and this Flickr set.

Also, this week we had our first piece of trash that was reclaimed instead of trashed or recycled. Dave found a plastic license plate holder on Jenkintown and Easton Roads in Glenside. He kept it and is considering using it for a picture frame. What an awesome idea!

With just one week left in our campaign, let’s see if anyone can beat William Shatner when it comes to strange trash! Thanks again to everyone who is helping us keep our streets a little cleaner this month!

This month’s Grid magazine has an article on where Philadelphia residents can recycle plastics #3-7:

Because No. 5 is the next most common plastic (after 1 and 2), Weaver’s Way Co-op (weaversway.coop) collects it—including Brita filters—as part of the “Gimme 5” campaign. Plastics must be clean, dry and clearly stamped with the number 5. Collections take place on the third Saturday of each month at the Co-op’s garage (524 Carpenter Lane), and all the plastics are then shipped to the Gimme 5 processing facility in New York State. The South Street Whole Foods (929 South Street) also collects No. 5 plastics.

The other numbers are trickier. The foam variety of No. 6–Polystyrene and the dreaded No. 7–Other categories are notoriously difficult to recycle. But Recycling Services, Inc. (365 Elm Street, Pottstown, 610-323-8545) takes all comers (numbers 1 through 7), and the facility is open for public collection on Tuesdays and Saturdays (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.). They charge an $8/car gate fee, so consider loading up with your neighbors’ No. 3 through 7s, too, before you head out there.

If you drink a lot of bottled beverages, you can recycle the caps at the Big Green Earth Store (934 South Street) and at Aveda stores throughout the Philadelphia region (the Shops at Liberty Place, Cherry Hill Mall, Willow Grove Park and Exton Square).

And, in addition to recycling plastic, we can just try to use it less — especially when it comes to unnecessary purchases like bottled water!

During the drive the parking lot of Cedarbrook Elementary School, normally empty on a weekend, was crowded with people and piled high with “e-waste” –old computers, TVs, radios, stereo equipment, toasters, and other used electronics that had reached the end of their useful lives.

Over the course of the weekend, over 150 families brought old electronics by the carload and paid $1 per pound to have them recycled ethically.

By Sunday afternoon, over 11,000 pounds of used electronics were packed up for shipping to facilities that will redistribute the use-able items to people who can use them, harvest working parts from broken components, and forward unsalvageable items to carefully chosen U.S. operations that recycle e-waste in accordance with the highest international standards (more information at www.ban.org). Over the past two years, TTF has helped to ethically recycle over 50,000 pounds of e-waste!

The-waste drive is the brainchild of Christopher Swain (pictured above), the first person in history to swim the entire lengths of several dirty waterways including the Columbia River, the Charles River, the Hudson River, and Lake Champlain to raise awareness about clean water issues. Cheltenham a stop on the way for Swain, who is currently swimming 1000 miles down the Atlantic coast from Marblehead, Massachusetts to Washington, DC. The ocean swim is part of his TOXTOUR^TM project (www.toxtour.org), an ongoing campaign to collect and recycle, ethically, one billion pounds of e-waste, to prevent toxic chemicals and heavy metals from fouling the world’s waterways and ecosystems.

A special thanks to our hard working crew from Arcadia University!

You can view more photos from the event in our Facebook album.

Christopher is currently swimming 1000 miles of the East Coast to raise awareness for clean water issues. In the days leading up to our e-waste drive, Christopher will speak to local school children about his swim and what they can do to help keep our waterways clean.

For more information on Christopher Swain or our upcoming e-waste drive, contact Katie at katie@ttfwatershed.org.

Podcast of the Week: Your computer’s dead. Now what?
In this week’s podcast, PennFuture’s western Pennsylvania Outreach Coordinator Joylette Portlock takes you on an audio tour of eLoop LLC, an ethical electronics recycling firm in Plum Borough, just outside of Pittsburgh. You’ll hear Ned Eldridge, eLoop’s president and CEO; Penny Holden, vice president of sales; and Jimmi Burns, director of operations, describe the recycling process step-by-step. You’ll learn exactly how our electronic waste the fastest growing waste stream in the world should be disposed of. Turns out our televisions, computers, cell phones, PDAs, printers, etc., are full of toxic chemicals that must be disposed of as hazardous waste, and precious metals and other valuable components that can be reused.

Unfortunately, there is no law in Pennsylvania banning all this electronic waste from our landfills. But that could change. Two e-recycling bills currently before the Pennsylvania General Assembly – HB 708 and SB 816. These bills will require manufacturers of electronics to take back their old products and arrange for them to be responsibly recycled. HB 708 has been approved by the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee and could be scheduled for a vote by the full House soon. SB 816 is currently before the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

In late June, PennFuture, eLoopLLC, and the Pennsylvania Resources Council held a special electronics recycling event as part of the Black and Gold City Goes Green Campaign. With just a few days notice, more than 350 Pittsburghers brought their old electronics to Heinz Field and paid to recycle three truckloads – about 20 tons – of old televisions, computers and more. The effort kept between six and seven tons of lead out of landfills.

From the article:

The E.P.A. estimates that 2.6 million tons of electronic waste were dropped into landfills in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available. Once buried, the waste leaches poisons and heavy metals into soil and groundwater.

Recycling programs do not address the problem of electronics that are already leaching poison in landfills. Nor do they prevent the frequent shipment of plastic shells covered with chemical flame retardants overseas to poor and developing nations; once there, they are often incinerated, because they cannot be reused, and spew toxic chemicals into the air.

The Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department has a continuing investigation into accusations that several federal prisons with electronics recycling contracts had used inmates to do the work without taking adequate safety precautions, exposing them to unhealthy levels of airborne particles.

Ultimately, said Ms. Kyle, coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, recycling does not eliminate the root problem: the vast amount of electronics generated in the first place and fated for disposal.

Read the whole article here.