EverLights and Alderman John Pope Hold Free E-Waste Recycling Drive

Every May, Alderman John Pope leads his 10^th ward with a handful of green events around the community to encourage residents to go green and help keep our community clean. For three years, we have helped Alderman Pope achieve this goal by offering free electronics recycling to local residents and businesses for the entire month.

During his 13 years as Alderman of Chicago’s 10th ward, Pope has been known for his green initiatives and strong belief in creating a sustainable community. “Our annual green events are important because they help us educate community residents about sustainability programs that we feel are really important,” said Pope. “Residents have had a tremendous response to these programs over the last five years and we’re excited to see how we can make it an even bigger success in the years to come.”

EverLights Team With Alderman John A. Pope

We are happy to announce that the drive has once again been a great success. Thanks to the help of the employees at the Alderman’s office, and the efforts by both parties to spread the word about the drive, we were able to collect nearly 1,400 pounds of e-waste.

Although the month-long e-waste recycling drive has now come to a close, we want to remind all of our community residents that we offer free e-waste recycling at our location in Chicago year-round. Residents are allowed to bring up to 10 pieces of electronic equipment to be recycled at no cost to them. Our recycling process includes data and hard drive destruction, plus 100% recycling.  For more information, call our office at (877) 934-9873.

How to Recycle Your E-Waste

Here’s the situation. You’ve read our previous posts about e-waste recycling, or heard about the new laws from other sources, and you decided it’s time to get serious about recycling your old electronics. Now the question is, how do you do it?

Well you’re in luck, because we have all the answers to your problems.

One of the many services EverLights offers to its customers is e-waste recycling. That should come as no surprise, considering how much we talk about it. We strive to make this entire process as easy on our customers as possible. This starts from the very beginning when a new call comes in asking about recycling and lasts the entire duration of the project.

We offer three easy to use recycling options for e-waste, all of which can be used by any of our customers.

Bulk Pickups 

EverLights will come to your location, whether it is a warehouse, office building or any other job site to pick up your old electronic equipment. In order to make the pickup go as smoothly as possible, we can bring packaging to your facility a few days beforehand. By doing this, we are able to expedite the process the day of the pickup, saving you time and money.

Pickups are usually recommended for businesses with large amounts of e-waste. We will also work with you to recycle your lamps, ballasts and batteries at the same time, if you choose to do so. This makes pickups more worthwhile and can save your business money.

Mail-In Recycling Program

Our mail-in recycling program, EverMail, isn’t just for lamps and batteries. You can use it to recycle e-waste too! It works the same way as our other options. Simply order one of the e-waste recycling boxes, put your equipment inside and send it back to us. Everything is covered in the initial cost of the box, so you don’t have to worry about any extra fees later on. This is the most cost-effective and efficient option for businesses that only have a few pieces of equipment to recycle.

Click to Order!

On-Site Drop-off

This is exactly what it sounds like. The final option we offer is an on-site drop-off. This is available to any business, regardless of size, and is often the easiest way to recycle. Simply bring your e-waste to our warehouse. We’ll help you unload the equipment, weigh it and send you on your way (once you’ve paid, of course). It really is that easy.

Want more information about e-waste recycling? Check out some of our previous blog posts or read our e-waste recycling green paper. There is a lot of great information in them, so make sure you check them out.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share. We’d love to hear your feedback!

What is a Mail-In Recycling Program?

A lot of businesses don’t go through lamps very quickly. Smaller locations use less, so naturally they have less to recycle. The easiest thing to do would be toss the lamps in the garbage with everything else, right? Wrong. There are better solutions than putting yourself (you can be charged up to $25,000) and others at risk. The best option for businesses that don’t use a lot of lamps is a recycling pak program. What is that, you ask?

Simply put, a recycling pak program is an easy, convenient way for businesses to recycle their lamps, ballast, batteries and even mercury. A lot of recycling companies offer mail-in services as a way for those who don’t go through a lot of these items to store and recycle them without much hassle. We call ours “EverMail,” but pak programs all serve the same purpose.

Pak programs work as follows:

1. Go online or call the recycling company to order boxes or pails
2. Fill the boxes or pails as needed
3. When your box or pail is full, fill out the shipping information, seal it, and send it back to the recycling company
4. Once your items have been processed you’ll be sent a Certificate of Recycling

These programs are ideal for retail, large and small corporations, sites with limited storage space, and de-centralized locations that generate minimal amounts of universal waste. The price of our EverMail program includes the cost of the box, shipping to and from EverLights, recycling fees and the certificate of recycling.

Click to Order EverMail Recycling Products

Next time you’re replacing lamps in your office or building, think about the options you have for getting rid of them, and make sure you put “throw them out” at the bottom of the list. If you don’t think using a pak program is your best option, you can also drop them off at, or call to have them picked up by, a number of places, including EverLights.

The Top 5 Green News Stories of the Week (12/29 – 1/5)

With the start of a new year often comes a lot of groundbreaking news stories. During the last week, we’ve seen new laws take effect, countless “best of 2011″ lists and some incredible pictures from celebrations around the world. It wasn’t easy, but we were able to choose our 5 favorite stories from the past week to share with you.

1. New E-Waste Recycling Laws Take Effect

To an e-waste recycling company, like EverLights, this could be considered the most important news story of the entire year, and it’s only January. Starting January 1, a new law went into effect changing the e-waste recycling standards that were already in place. Included in this new law are higher penalties for failure to comply (up from $1,000 to $7,000), and a longer list of equipment that needs to be recycled. Now, more than ever, it is important for business owners and building managers to understand these laws.

EverLights can help you figure out how to handle your e-waste, and offers solutions that make your job as easy as possible.

2. Waste & Recycling News’ Top Stories of 2011

This is actually 10 stories in one. Since it’s the first week of the year, we thought it would be more valuable to share an article with the 10 best stories of 2011, rather than showing you one recent story. Waste & Recycling News put together a quick recap of its 10 best stories of 2011 and compiled them into this great list. In our opinion, each story on this list belongs there. Take a look at #7, for example. See any similarities to the article and this post?

3. The Top 25 Alternative Energy Moves of 2011

Lists are great, aren’t they? They’re easy to navigate, and you can pick and choose what you want to read, saving you time. That’s why we decided to put another list on our list.

This time, it’s, “The Top 25 Alternative Energy Moves of 2011.” We’re in the lamp recycling business, so most of these don’t fall into our area of expertise, but they’re still great stories you should all know about. Organizations like Google, Facebook and NASA are sure to grab a lot of peoples’ attention, but read the entire list. You might learn something you didn’t know.

4. Incandescent Light Bulb Ban Put on Hold

This story wasn’t published within the last week, but since we didn’t do a “top 5″ last week, we thought it would be fair to include it. It is, after all, one of the biggest news stories about the lighting industry.

When President Obama signed the recent spending bill to avert a government shutdown, he put the phase-out of incandescent bulbs on hold (sort of). The bill doesn’t end the incandescent ban, but instead states that no money can be allocated to enforce the law. This hasn’t stopped businesses from pulling the bulbs from their shelves, however. Plenty of stores around the country have gotten a head start on the ban, and most manufacturers have ended production of the 100-watt bulbs. If you’re a fan of this old, outdated technology, enjoy it while it lasts. It won’t be long before the bulbs are gone for good.

5. New Year Celebrations Around the World

It’s alright to include a story that isn’t “green,” right? We think so. Especially when the story involves incredible photographs.

In case you missed it, new years eve was this past weekend. People around the world celebrate in different ways, with traditions that are unique to their cultures and families. The Big Picture, Boston.com’s photography section, recently posted pictures of new years celebrations around the world. We think these pictures are amazing, so what better time than now to share them with you? We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

(Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press)

If you have any questions or comments about the stories listed, please leave us a comment. We’d love to hear what you have to say!

As always, feel free to contact us with any recycling questions you might have. We’re always happy to help!

What Happens to Recycled E-Waste?

Electronic waste, also known as e-waste, is one of the fastest growing types of waste in the world. According to the EPA, the United States throws away over 2 million tons of e-waste every year. Do you ever wonder what happens to the waste that is actually recycled? If you’re not sure, this quote from a recent NPR article does a great job describing it.

“The dirty little secret is that when you take [your electronic waste] to a recycler, instead of throwing it in a trashcan, about 80 percent of that material, very quickly, finds itself on a container ship going to a country like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Pakistan — where very dirty things happen to it,” says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Basel Action Network, which works to keep toxic waste out of the environment.

The truth is, there’s a lot of money to be made by sending electronics overseas. The metal from electronics can be sold for a significant amount of money, appealing to companies that are simply out to improve their bottom line. We pride ourselves on being better than that.

The dangers of sending e-waste overseas are too great for us to participate in. For starters, the methods that are used to process e-waste are unhealthy and are often done by hand, with little to no protective material provided. This means the workers who are handling the material are breathing in toxic fumes, which can lead to terrible health issues immediately, or a few years down the road.

Health risks aren’t the only negative impacts of sending e-waste overseas. By doing this, companies are also putting your personal or business information at risk. Companies that send electronic equipment, such as hard drives, to other countries, don’t take the time to wipe the existing data off the equipment. In a time when nearly everything is done electronically, there’s a pretty good chance you have personal information stored on your computer. By not taking the proper precautions, you could be putting your identity at risk.

Our e-waste policies are different. None of the materials we touch are ever sent overseas. Our e-waste processor has received NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) Data Sanitization and Destruction Certification. This certification is difficult to gain, and currently there are only five facilities within the United States who have earned the prestigious NAID Data Sanitization and Destruction Certification. Before anything else is done, our e-waste processor wipes all data from your materials, ensuring your personal information won’t be seen by others. All hard drives are shredded into small pieces. We remove circuit boards before shredding as circuit boards are focused materials (i.e. materials with hazardous components). We send the circuit boards to smelters for smelting and the shredded materials are sent to non-ferrous metal processor for recovery of metals.

Next time you’re looking to recycle your electronics, do some research and find out where the company you use sends your materials. If the company doesn’t keep materials in the US, it might be a good idea to find one that does. Doing this means safety for you, and safety for the people who would be handling the materials in another country. It’s a win-win if you ask me.