UO Environmental Healthand Safety Pioneers Computer Recycling

Program helps campus departments recycle their old equipment and safely dispose of dead CPUs

Joyce Winslow
jwins@oregon.uoregon.edu

Last spring, the Office of Environmental Healthy and Safety launched its campus campaign to keep toxic electronic waste out of our landfills.

By mid-June, the program had shipped off two truckloads of surplus property and demanufactured computer monitors from the UO Science complex and the UO Library, diverting over 2000 pounds of lead from the landfills. Most of the surplus equipment is donated back to the community through the state's surplus property program, but the UO Art Department appropriates some of the disassembled pieces for various individual art projects.

Spearheading the effort is UO Environmental Manager Nick Williams. Nick gives a lot of credit for the initial success of the program to Computing Center electronic technician Rob Jaques (see "Who's Who" on page 14), who provides safety training, and Education's Irene Smith and her "crack team" of students, who perform the bulk of sorting and demanufacturing tasks. He also praises Property Control Specialist Susie Endow for her help in expediting the recycling of surplus electronic equipment.

The next consignment of recycled equipment is scheduled for mid-July. You can help by sorting through monitors, CPUs, keyboards, and similar computer and electronic equipment that you no longer use, tagging those that don't work and separating them from those that do. For full details, contact Connie French at connie@oregon.uoregon.edu and use "Computer Harvest" in the subject line of your message.