Two Southwestern College clubs have teamed up with recycling company LinkServ to host a free electronic waste and paper recycling event at SWC’s weekly OpenAire market.
The two-day event is hosted by the Student Veteran Organization (SVO) and the Sustainable Research Alliance (SRA). It ran Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will continue Sunday during the same time.
It is located in SWC parking Lot O.
This is the first time the clubs have hosted the event.
“We take batteries, we take computer parts, we take appliances. We will take any electric items that you don’t use anymore,” said SVO President Milt Ellison. “Recycle it. Don’t throw it away.”
- Photo by Anna Pryor.
LinkServ is based out of San Diego and Chula Vista. Coordinating the event was Joshua Stoltz, who works sales for the company, and is a SWC alumni and former SVO member. He approached the SVO to make the event happen. He encouraged everyone to recycle and said that waste from technology is particularly detrimental to the environment.
“Seventy percent of our hazardous waste material comes from electronic waste,” he said.
President of the SRA, David Sanchez, is grateful to be guest sponsoring the event. He said the club focuses on recycling and going green. This event gives them an opportunity to implement these goals, he said.
“We talk about it, we raise awareness for it and this is us actually doing it,” he said.
Sanchez said the event started slow in the morning, but picked up speed as the day went on.Soon they had cars driving up jam-packed of E-waste to recycle.
Stoltz said it was a good turnout.
“This is good, this is about average,” Stoltz said. “It’s a little more than I expected because we had so little time to prepare but now we’re ready for the next time.”
Ellison said he was glad to see the line of cars coming in to drop off waste.
“We’ve seen quite a bit of success,” Ellison said. “I’m really glad to see so many people are conscious of recycling and we’ve gotten much more materials here than I expected and I’m very pleased with that.
Both clubs said they plan to host the event again in the future. Turnout for the event should increase with time, they said.
“Some people don’t have time to come, but we’re raising awareness and they’ll know so they can be ready for the next time,” Sanchez said.
The clubs said they would split the profits from the event. Stoltz estimated they will receive $400.
The SVO said they will be donating their profits to a charity that supports wounded warriors.
“Were supporting the warriors that came back from Iran and Iraq. Some of them came back with serious disabilities,” Ellison said. “Some are missing arms, some are missing legs, some are missing both. So we do whatever we can to support them.”
SRA’s funds will eventually go to creating scholarships.
“Our dream since we started this is to create scholarships,” Sanchez said.
Waste that is donated is sorted initially on site, then taken back to LinkServ’s warehouse. From there, they further separate the materials and break them down into smaller components. Eventually, they return to their raw form and are re-purposed. Stoltz said this is the proper way to dispose materials and said he encourages everyone to learn more about the process and why it is important.
The clubs said they invite everyone to participate in the E-Waste event and will be working to promote future events.
“There’s always time to recycle and take care of the planet,” Sanchez said.
