Fort Leonard Wood's semi-annual household e-cycling and battery collection is scheduled 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 29 at the southwest side of the Nutter Field House parking lot.
Electronics such as old CPUs, printers, fax machine, televisions, VCRs, DVD players, speakers, keyboards, laptops, regular and cell phones, and microwaves will be accepted for recycling.
In addition, household batteries will be collected.
The collection is open to active-duty military and their Families, Department of the Army civilians and retirees.
No government or business electronics, large appliances, refrigerators or car batteries will be accepted.
According to Craig French, Solid Waste and Recycling Program manager, Directorate of Public Works, the collections net a yearly average of 8 tons.
"Our collection grows a little each year, in terms of quantity," French said. "That is good for the environment, when you consider the composition of some of the old TVs and monitors that contained cathode ray tubes."
French said some of those devices contain 4 to 7 pounds of lead components and "when disposed of in landfills could potentially do harm to the environment, should the toxic elements reach the water table."
French said the electronics recycler uses a certified secure data destruction service that relies on top industry drive-wiping software and strong inventory management controls.
However, French recommends individuals make sure their devices contain no sensitive information, such as addresses, phone numbers, passwords, account numbers, email, voicemail and text message logs, before handing them over for recycling.
Tips for cellphone recycling
-- First, try to use the factory reset. Many devices allow you to "wipe" your device and clear nearly all the information in its memory. Sometimes, this is called a "hard reset," or "factory reset."
-- Second, remove or erase SIM and SD cards. Many mobile devices store information on a SIM card or an external SD card as well as in the device's internal memory.
Even when you "wipe" your device, your SIM card or SD cards may retain information about you.
Remove them from your device or delete the data that's stored on them.
Tips for cleaning hard drives
-- Before you clean a hard drive, save the files you want to keep to a USB drive, a CD-ROM, an external hard drive or a new computer.
-- Utility programs to wipe a hard drive are available both online and in stores where computers are sold.
These programs generally are inexpensive; some are available on the Internet for free.
Some erase the entire disk, while others allow you to select files or folders to erase.
Some overwrite or wipe the hard drive many times, while others overwrite it only once.
Consider using a program that overwrites or wipes the hard drive many times; otherwise, the deleted information could be retrieved.
-- Or remove the hard drive, and physically destroy it.
For more information about the e-cycling collection, call 573.596.0131, ext. 61385.
(Editor's note: Recycle tips provided by the Federal Trade Commission.)
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