E-cycling at the fairgrounds

By Fran Odyniec

Editor

When it comes to announced recycling days, the residents of Madison County know what to do.

This past Saturday, residents brought 7 1/2 tons of recyclable electronics to location in London at the Madison County Fairgrounds and in Mt. Sterling at the parking lot of the Family Dollar store.

Pleasant Township trustees filled two dump trucks with recyclable electronics that were left with them at the Mt. Sterling site.

“We have a lot of people who are conscientious about what they put in the trash,” said a pleased Darlene Steele, program coordinator of North Central Ohio Waste District’s Madison/Union County. “They are realizing that some of what they would put out as trash can be made into something else, thus keeping it out of existing landfills.”

Also, 45 television sets weighing in at 3,000 pounds were brought in.

Steele and Ruth Hoffman, of Union Recyclers in Marysville, supervised recycling day.

Steele said that of the electronic items that were brought to the two locations for recycling, 100 percent of the electronics can be recycled while only 25 percent of the inner parts of a television can be turned into something else.

She explained that a television’s plastic cabinet can be recycled, but, because of the cost involved in separating the parts from the cabinet, a $15 surcharge, which people willingly paid, had to be assessed for each television set brought in.

Overall, Steele said it was a good day.

Everyone who dropped off recycling items at the fairgrounds location received either a tomato, cucumber, or pepper plant. Inmates at London Correctional Institution have been working with the waste district in starting hundreds of these plants as tokens of appreciation for those who participate in recycling day.