KILAUEA — Old electronic equipment lay in a pile on the grass off the lower parking area at the Kaua‘i Mini Golf Monday morning as the Pacific Corporate Solutions team started its week-long schedule of electronic recycling. Brent Furuyama of
KILAUEA — Old electronic equipment lay in a pile on the grass off the lower parking area at the Kaua‘i Mini Golf Monday morning as the Pacific Corporate Solutions team started its week-long schedule of electronic recycling.
Brent Furuyama of Pacific Corporate Solutions said the last time the team was on Kaua‘i was in December, when they were collecting items at the Vidinha Stadium parking lot.
The move to the other areas of the island is new for this collection. The team was at Kilauea through Tuesday. Today and Thursday, the Pacific Corporate Solutions team will be at the ‘Ele‘ele Shopping Center parking lot from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The collection will be wrapped up Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Vidinha Stadium parking lot.
The county is partnering with Pacific Corporate Solutions and Sims Recycling Solutions to offer these free events to the public, states a county release.
Residents and businesses can drop off any obsolete and unwanted electronic items at the designated locations during the announced schedule.
“This is a great opportunity for residents and businesses to recycle their electronic waste,” said Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. “It is important for all of us to divert as much waste as possible from our landfill in order to preserve precious landfill space and manage potentially harmful items.”
Carvalho added his thanks to people who have held on to their electronic items until this week in order to dispose of them properly.
Collected items during the e-waste event will be shipped to Sims Recycling Solutions in California for recycling and reuse.
Additionally, all recycled data storage devices will be cleaned or destroyed in a manner which is acceptable in the electronics industry, the release states.
People concerned about sensitive data should remove the data prior to recycling by utilizing any of the following methods: remove and retain the hard drive; physically destroy the hard drive; or erase the data from the hard drive. Instructions on how to erase data from a hard drive are available by contacting a computer specialist.
Electronics waste, or e-waste, is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world with more than 2 million tons ending up in landfills, states the ewastehawaii.com website.
It is estimated e-waste makes up about 2 percent of the municipal solid waste stream, but that 2 percent also represents about 70 percent of the overall toxic waste found in landfills, the website states.
The Environmental Protection Agency defines e-waste as products such as computers, monitors, cell phones, televisions, telcom equipment or other discarded equipment using electricity which are obsolete, irreparable or broken.
Visit www.kauai.gov/recycling or call the County Recycling office at 241-4841 for information on the e-recycling program.
Visit www.ewastehawaii.com for more information on e-waste.
