Leawood will host the city’s fourth annual “Electronic Recycling Day” this Saturday in the north parking lot of the Town Center Plaza shopping complex.
Attendees can recycle any unwanted or outdated electronics and do so largely free of charge.
Here are the details:
Leawood’s Sustainability Advisory Board and MRC Recycling, a Missouri-based electronics recycling firm, are partnering to offer the contactless drop off for a wide variety of electronic items.
That includes:
- cellphones
- tablets
- computers
- gaming systems
- TVs
- printers
- dehumidifiers
- other home appliances.
The e-recycling event will start at 8 a.m. Saturday near the now-shuttered Bravo Cucina Italiana restaurant.
Items will be accepted through 12 p.m. or until the trucks are full.
Haley Kenig, director of marketing for Town Center Plaza, said they hope the event provides a convenient option for residents who aren’t familiar with electronic recycling opportunities in their area.
“We wanted to make it easy for residents to do their part by reducing waste and recycling electronics in an environmentally-friendly way,” Kenig said.
The city collected 68,000 pounds last year
The event has already shown the ability to draw crowds and collect significant sums of recyclable electronics.
In 2020, the event yielded over 40,000 pounds of items.
The event continued to grow and collected 68,000 pounds of items last year.
Leawood City Councilmember Lisa Harrison, who is also the vice-chair of the city’s Sustainability Advisory Board, said organizers are bracing for an even bigger haul this year.
“People were waiting in line for 40 minutes last year,” Harrison said. “This will be another great opportunity to divert electronics from landfills and encourage green and sustainable practices.”
What happens to the electronics after dropoff?
MRC Recycling will be hauling off the items collected Saturday and taking them to their headquarters in Imperial, Missouri, outside St. Louis, where everything will be de-manufactured by hand.
While some items will be refurbished, most will have their raw materials extracted by hand and turned into new usable components.
Corporate Operations Manager Ryan Hall says they expect to see a number of unique items at these kinds of events.
“We will see old stoves, water heaters, maybe some refrigerators,” Hall said. “We take just about anything, even old boats.”
Can I recycle electronics outside Saturday’s event?
MRC Recycling encourages drop-offs at their local facility at 2000 E. 19th St. in Kansas City, Missouri.
They are open Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m to 5 p.m.
MRC Recycling has other e-cycling events scheduled nearly every weekend around Kansas and Missouri.
Their biggest local event of the year is in Overland Park on October 14th.
That event will be at Black and Veatch headquarters, 11401 Lamar Ave., and is expected to bring in about 150,000 pounds of recyclable electronics materials.
What will Saturday’s event cost?
While most items will be free to drop-off, some items will cost a fee to dispose of, including:
- printers, copiers and multifunction printers cost $5.00 each,
- cathode ray tube computer monitors (the bulkier, older kind) cost $5.00 each,
- vape pens cost $1.00 each,
- televisions cost $20
- and appliances containing freon cost $10.
For a full list of the fees MRC charges, look here.
More news on recycling: Should I keep recycling plastic? Here’s one JoCo city’s advice
Ben McCarthy is a contributor to the Post and other publications in the Kansas City area. He can be reached at ben.c.mccarthy@gmail.com with questions, comments and story suggestions.
