E-Waste Recycling

If you watch your favorite programs on a new television, what did you do with the old one?  Putting TV's in the landfill is legal for now, but not advised because of the risk to the environment.

But there is a one of a kind option in the Ozarks.  It's one of a kind because it is the only state certified electronic recycling center in Missouri.  And in the middle of the computer age, a business to recycle old TV's, computers and VCR's to keep them out of the landfill seems to be a sure thing.

When you walk into the Computer Recycling Center on north National, you’ll see an assembly line of sorts.  It's actually a disassembly line.  Workers quickly dismantle computers and monitors to salvage every piece of tin, aluminum, plastic and copper down to the smallest piece.

Those materials are then sorted and sold to create other products, making Computer Recycling Center a high tech scrap dealer of sorts.  And business is booming.

Changing technologies create the need for new computers, cell phones and remote controls and now there's a safe way to dispose of the old ones.

"With your average VCR, we'll disassemble, cut it up and shred it.  It's then used back into the raw materials.  The tin is used again; the plastic is used again and again and again." says Ken Reiss, president of the Computer Recycling Center.

John Missildine, Computer Recycling Center’s general manager, adds, "It just seems such a shame that we can get all this material out of the Earth, process it,  turn it into tin, cooper, lead and steel, use it one time and throw it away.  It just makes absolutely no sense."

Reiss says his focus is on disposing of televisions and computer monitors because the picture tube, or CRT, contains about five pounds lead.  Those are disassembled and the tube is shipped to a company in Saint Louis to extract the lead. 

The other focus is on security for the sensitive information stored on all of the hard drives that comes in to be recycled.