Registration Begins For Champaign County Electronics Recycling
Jim Meadows/Illinois Public Media
Online registration for the upcoming Fall Residential Electronics Collection Event for Champaign County begins Monday September 9 at 8:00am.
The drive-through recycling event is an opportunity for residents of the county to recycle electronic appliances, from computer mice to television sets, without having to pay a fee. It will be held, rain or shine, on Saturday, October 12 from 8 A.M. to noon at Parkland College in Champaign. Registrants can recycle up to seven items, including up to four TV’s. Small items such as cords and computer mice can be bundled or boxed as one item.
Champaign, Urbana, Savoy and Champaign County sponsor the twice-yearly recycling event, with 18 other towns in the county paying a population-based fee to participate. Six towns do not participate: Tolono, Philo, Pesotum, Longview, Broadlands and Foosland.
Nicole Millage, Environmental Sustainability Specialist with the city of Champaign, said some 1,700 people showed for the recycling event last spring, about 80% of those who had registered. She said the event is designed to handle 140 people per quarter hour, or 2,240 during the entire four-hour event.
Electronic recycling events are held around the state, because Illinois law forbids many electronic appliances from landfills, including televisions, computers and related equipment such as monitors and printers, fax machines, video recorder/players (VCR, DVD & DVR), cable/satellite receivers, game consoles, small scale servers, scanners and portable digital music players.
Millage said televisions make up around two-thirds of the recycling they receive by weight at the recycling events. Many of these are old analog cathode ray tube (CRT) sets, which are the most difficult to recycle elsewhere.
The event is open to all Champaign County residents, except for those living in the six towns not participating.
Registrants will be asked to pick a particular quarter hour to drop off their electronics for recycling, with room for up to 140 registrants per quarter hour. Access to the event is from Parkland’s Duncan Road entrance.
In addition to the October 12 recycling event, there are year-round opportunities for electronics recycling in Champaign County. A list is available here. They include recycling the appliances for their materials and the re-use of working equipment. For cathode ray tube televisions, the only option is Best Buy, which charges a $25 fee to take them. That makes the October 12 recycling event the only option for free CRT-TV recycling in Champaign County.