Mark Twain Elementary fifth grade students, teachers and parents collected 21.25 tons of recyclable electronic products during a recycling event on March 3. That’s equal to 42,500 pounds, according to 1 Green Planet’s Mike Szanyi.
Eastside residents dropped off their lawn mowers, BBQs, computer equipment, televisions, treadmills, appliances, hot water heaters and more to fill five 1 Green Planet “box” trucks with items that will now be recycled rather than ending up in our landfills.
“This was an amazing experience for all of us. The students were able to witness, firsthand, the results of a community-wide service project. We will definitely be doing this again,” noted Twain fifth grade teachers Susan Preston and Becky Alfrejd.
According to Szanyi, all electronic products will be recycled and processed locally, supporting the local economy and using the 1 Green Planet processing center and other responsible recycling partner facilities. No items will be sent to developing nations for processing.
Szanyi said the items received are manually dismantled as the first step to recovering all of the commodities. Items that cannot be dismantled in an efficient manner are put through a shredding process. Whole e-scrap or dismantled parts can be shredded down to pieces that are less than two inches in diameter. They are then separated through a series of devices all connected via conveyor belts in a process that is 95 percent automated.
Proceeds from recycled raw materials fund operations and benefit local charities, homeless shelters, and food banks. Seattle Children’s Hospital and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital are among those assisted through recycling donations.
During the recycling event, donations were collected to support Twain fifth grade students end of the year marine biology field trip on Puget Sound as well as other school wide activities. The accepted donations will make the educational field trip much more affordable for Twain families.
1 Green Planet is a sustainable ZERO waste ZERO landfill recycling operation. 1 Green Planet is a public non-profit organization. For information, visit www.1greenplanet.org.
