Tired of your iPhone 6 collecting dust in your drawer? Well, look no further - USC H-REC is here to help. The center hosts e-waste drives, encouraging students to recycle their old phones and other electronic drivers. Logan Drone has more on the story.
According to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, in 2019, 7 million tons of e-waste was produced in the United States, but just 15% of if was properly recycled.
To combat that, USC’s Human Resources, Equity and Compliance, or H-Rec, department partnered with the hazardous materials division of the California Department of Health and Safety to host USC’s first annual e-waste drive. Last year, the university as a whole recycled a little over 337,000 lbs of electronic devices.
Emily White, the business operations specialist of H-Rec, says many people just don’t know what to do with their old devices.
WHITE: What I’m finding on this drive that we have is people have tons of recyclable items at home that they really want to know where to put.
Anthony Rodriguez, a worker at the hazardous materials division, says it’s important that people dispose of their old technology the right way, because it can be dangerous when misplaced.
RODRIGUEZ: So the electronic components do have a lot of metals...that have a negative impact to the environment. So by managing these properly and giving them a second life as well as proper recycling of these, we keep these out of the landfill - so there’s no possibility for any of these metals to leach out into the environment.
Leeching, as Rodriguez mentioned, occurs when toxic metals like mercury and lead found in hardware dissolve spread out, eventually pooling into the ground under the landfill. The toxic materials can contaminate groundwater, which can affect nearby wildlife. However, White encourages recycling as it prevents the need for mining new materials and unintentionally throwing out old equipment that is still usable.
WHITE: What we really want to do is make sure that we can give it a second life or at least keep it out of landfills. What we’d like to do is donate a lot of our desktops to high school students and the community that really can use it.
If you have any extra electronic devices and are looking to give them a second life, the e-waste drive will be open until Thursday from 9:30 A.M. - 1:00 P.M. at the USC Credit Union tomorrow and the Carol Little building on Thursday.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Logan Drone.