Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Guidance Recycling & eWaste program

I don't want to toot the Guidance horn, but beep beep! We are doing our best to engage all of the Guidance employees to contribute to our green initiatives. Last week we had a successful e-waste week, where Guidance employees dropped off their e-waste for proper recycling. Here is a sample of items (with their nasty chemicals) that should never be thrown in the trash, but instead recycled properly:

Lead: solder, CRT monitors (lead in glass), lead-acid batteries
Tin: solder
Copper: copper wire, printed circuit board tracks
Cadmium: light-sensitive resistors, corrosion-resistant alloys for marine and aviation environments
Aluminium: nearly all electronic goods using more than a few watts of power (heatsinks)
Iron: steel chassis, cases and fixings
Silicon: glass, transistors, ICs, printed circuit boards.
Nickel and cadmium: nickel-cadmium batteries
Lithium: lithium-ion battery
Zinc: plating for steel parts
Gold: connector plating, primarily in computer equipment
Americium: smoke alarms (radioactive source)
Germanium: 1950s–1960s transistorised electronics (bipolar junction transistors)
Mercury: fluorescent tubes (numerous applications), tilt switches (pinball games, mechanical doorbells, thermostats)
Sulphur: lead-acid batteries
Carbon: steel, plastics, resistors. In almost all electronic equipment. *

*Full Wkipedia entry

This is a great way to engage your own co-workers/peers because it is not only good for the environment, but there were laughs galore at the antiquated laptops, computer monitors, CPUs etc. that people had! It was a fine collection that Old-Computers.com would have been proud to exhibit!

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