National Public Radio has decided upon their main topic for this year’s Earth Day: e-Waste.
Elizabeth Wilmot, founder of Turtle Wings Electronics Recycling, Walter Acorn of the Consumer Electronics Association (News - Alert), Ishmail Oyekan of the Electronic Waste Journal, and Sarah Westervelt of the Basel Action Network will be among the guests who would be interviewed for NPR’s (News - Alert) piece. NPR creates and distributes award-winning news, information, and music programming to a network of 900 independent stations, and has a reach of more than 27.2 million listeners every week.
In a release, the Marketing Manager at Turtle Wings & Data Killers, Jairus Wright, said that, “We are delighted that more and more news sources are turning to us as the subject matter experts in data destruction and electronics recycling. We have always provided the highest standards of recycling and the most secure data destruction services and that is being recognized and acknowledged.”
The nation’s awareness of environmental issues usually increases in the weeks leading up to Earth Day, hence NPR’s programming decision. Interviews were conducted by Kojo Nnamdi, a leading NPR personality, who led an hour long discussion on the “The Afterlife of Your Electronics” with a host of panel experts on his Tech Tuesday show. A range of topics including the actual process of recycling to the emerging standards and certifications for electronics recyclers in order to control exports of hazardous materials to developing countries, were covered. Other certification programs like e-Stewards and Europe’s standards were also discussed.
Wilmot stressed the importance of the role Turtle Wings is playing in the process, stating that Turtle Wings integrates R2 guidelines as the environmental policy piece of their ISO 14001 certification. R2 guidelines have been designed by the EPA and focus on the recycling of materials such as batteries, circuit boards, CRT monitors and ink toner. Apart from electronics recycling, Turtle Wings also provides on-site destruction services nationwide under their Data Killers trade name. Together, Turtle Wings & Data Killers were recently featured in the April edition of Waste Advantage magazine in an article entitled “Data Destruction Best Practices for Computer Recycling.”
Some of the items accepted by Turtle Wings for recycling include, Answering Machines, Ballasts-non PCB, Batteries, Cables, Camcorders, CDs/ DVDs, Cell Phones, Circuit Boards, Compact Disc Players Computer Equipment, Computers, Copiers, Cords, Duplicators, DVD Players, Electric Typewriters, Electronic Games Fax Machines, Hard Drives, Keyboards / Mice Household Electronics, Ink / Toner, Lab Equipment Laptops, Laptop batteries, LCD Monitors Mainframe Equipment, Media, Metal Scrap Microwave Ovens Modems, Monitors, Networking Equipment, Pagers PDA’s Printers Printed Circuit Board Radios, Rechargeable Batteries, Remote Controls, Scanners Stereo Components, Stereos, Tapes, Tape Players, Telephones, Telecom Equipment, and Televisions Testing Equipment, among others.
Carolyn John is a Contributor to TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please columnist page.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
