Editorial: Make electronics disposal cheap and easy
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We live in a very garbage-heavy world.
People throw away everything and do it without thinking much about it. Paper plates and plastic straws and the boxes and bags that package them. The jars and cans that hold food. Baby diapers and cardboard and banana peels and coffee grounds and a million other things are casually discarded in the trash each week.
So Harrison’s new garbage contract with Waste Management might be the kind of thing people pay as much attention to as a crumpled burger wrapper.
They should pay more attention to it. They should appreciate it for what it provides.
The commissioners approved a three-year agreement that will add $3.15 to each quarterly bill for picking up hazardous waste. You might think, “Ugh, typical, an increase.” But it is a good deal for the residents of Harrison and the environment.
The “hazardous waste” in question isn’t uranium rods or toxic chemicals. The fee increase covers common household goods that we don’t often think of as being hazardous but do need to be regulated when they are discarded — televisions, computers and other electronics.
It’s easy to buy a TV. They are cheaper and have better features every year, and with stimulus and tax-refund checks and the Super Bowl around the corner, sales will be everywhere. But it’s a lot harder to get rid of one. They can’t just be tossed in the trash, and they can sometimes even be hard to donate. As a result, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has documented televisions tossed and dumped in woods, rivers and vacant lots throughout the state because of the difficulty of legal disposal.
The Harrison agreement allows for “At Your Door” collection of electronics and other hazardous materials, such as paint and pool chemicals, instead of paying a per-pound fee at semiannual collection events at the township building. Commissioner William Heasley said his fees last year for such disposal topped $100.
It isn’t as simple as stuffing it in a Hefty bag. It will require scheduling and getting a special kit with a bag for disposal, but that’s a lot easier than paying through the nose to find someone who will accept the waste or paying an arm and a leg for the fines for dumping it illegally.
And making disposal of something potentially dangerous both cheap and easy makes doing it the wrong way less attractive, which is good for the planet, the state and the people.