Learning and Leading - November 2008

“We hold an e-cycling event at our Back-To-School Night in the fall,” said Steve Taffee, an ISTE Special Interest Group Technology Coordinator member from Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. Through its partnership with community members, the school is recycling 1,000 units per year.

The International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER) has a certification program for responsible recycling, conducting third-party audits of electronics recycling facilities.

Step 4. What others are doing. An informal poll of two of ISTE’s special interest groups, reveals widely varying e-waste solutions enacted by school districts. They are limited, in many cases, by the recycling resources available to them. Members of the Special Interest Group for Technology Coordinators (SIGTC) and the Special Interest Group for Computing Teachers (SIGCT) report that some schools, like the University of Northern Iowa, sell used equipment at an auction three times a year, according to Associate Professor Leigh Zeitz. Director of Technology Pamela McLeod said the board policy in her New Hampshire school district requires they first attempt to sell old equipment, and then donate it to schools, libraries, or nonprofits before discarding it. “Our town transfer station accepts electronic equipment for e-waste recycling, so that is our preferred method of disposal,” she said. Like many others in her position, she is recycling some equipment for which there is no market. “This year we are recycling about 40 old CRT monitors for which we were not able to find a seller or a donation recipient,” McLeod added.

Many schools, such as the Mount Carmel Academy in New Orleans where SIGTC member Russel Dero-che Jr. teaches, donate usable equipment to a local charity and send the rest to a recycling firm. Educators in the San Francisco Bay Area have available to them some of the most aggressive and thorough recycling firms such as Green Citizen. That’s the firm partnering with the Castilleja School,

according to SIGTC member Steve Taffee. His school recycles about 1,000 units a year, and its recycling effort also extends to the larger community.

“We hold an e-cycling event at our Back-To-School Night in the fall,” he explained. “Parents can drop off certain items that we can recycle for free at Green Citizen; very popular. The tech department also takes laptops, monitors, TVs, cell phones, toner cartridges, and batteries at any time of year for e-cycling,” Taffee added.

It’s illegal to donate used equipment directly to charity in the state of Iowa, according to SIGTC member Gordon Dahlby. “School equipment is, at face value, owned by the taxpayers. One must either sell it to the highest bidder, set a fair market value to sell it to the public (which could be purchased by nonprofits), or dispose of it by lot or bid,” he explained. Dahlby also mentioned that the donation of used equipment may be disallowed in some states, because it might appear to be donating to poor families at the exclusion of any particular group of taxpayers. “The slippery slope is identifying needy families and also not incurring any future support costs once the units are out of district control,” he said.

Wayne Burnett, primary ICT specialist and coordinator of learning technologies at the German European School in Singapore, had an even more startling situation, “We looked at an orphanage the school is supporting in nearby Bintan Island, Indonesia. The offer was turned down because they do not have electricity. That might be a problem for a few international schools,” he added. In Singapore, he had the opposite problem: The charities there had notable requirements in terms of operating systems, and so they, too, were uninterested in his used equipment.

Step 5. Put together your plan for responsible e-waste management. After educating yourself and stakeholders about applicable e-waste legislation and researching local recycling opportunities, consider viable solutions for your organization. Keep in mind partnerships locally and internationally and involve the whole community in the solution.

Resources

Videos

Hewlett-Packard video showing how electronic scanning of sorted e-waste works: hpbroad- band.com/(S(zzafvv550kpzre55rosjwh2x))/ program.aspx?key=7JVQ93ORQO

Riverside Waste Machinery: www. wastemachinery.co.uk/video_electronic_ scrap.asp

SSI Shredding Systems: See how easily large items such as printers, copy machines, and even entire Volkswagens are shredded: www. ssiworld.com/watch/watch-en.htm

Web sites

Apple: www.apple.com/environment/recycling/ nationalservices/ us.html

Basel Convention: www.basel.int
California Waste Recycling Act of 2003:
www.ciwmb.ca.gov/electronics/Act2003
Dell: www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.
aspx/dellrecycling?c=us&cs= 19&l=en&s=dhs
Electronics Industries Alliance: www.eiae.org
European Union: ec.europa.eu/environment/
waste/weee/ index_en.htm