Electronics

Electronic waste, or E-Waste, is a term used for electronic products that have reached the end of their useful life because they are either broken, obsolete, or simply unwanted.

Those products contain valuable, and most often toxic, materials and should never be put in the regular garbage. Materials and components can be reused and should be recycled when reusing is not an option.

Our Commitment

Recycle Brevard is committed to sending less to our landfills and creating a more sustainable community, so we have partnered with Computers Advancing Education to be their DROP-OFF

LOCATION for the reuse and recycling of computers. We also accept other electronics and metals for recycling through a local recycling company. This is a FREE service we offer to the community.

NOT ACCEPTED: The only things we cannot accept are the things our partner or local recycler don't collect. The list is short and might change, so make sure to check it and NOT bring any:

• Monitors
• TVs
• Printers

According to county announcement, you may place CRTs on the curb for collection on regular trash day and you may take flat monitors, TVs and printers to the closest county Hazardous Waste collection center location. You may also be able to schedule special curb pick-up for those materials. For questions about any of that, contact your Solid Waste Management Department or your local hauler.

If those are still working, you may choose to donate them to A+ Thrift Shop for Education, Brevard Restore, Sharing Center of Central Brevard, South Brevard Sharing Center, Sharing Center Merritt Island Thrift Store, and North Brevard Charities Sharing Center and the Women's Center of Brevard.



Alternatives

You may also choose to take electronics to be recycled at Best Buy. They offer recycling services for a wide range of electronics  -- including printers -- and most of them free of charge.

Brevard residents may take up to 10 large hazardous items per year to one of the available collection centers.

Brevard County Solid Waste Management Dept. lists other options on their website. Check it out: https://brevardfl.gov/SolidWaste/DisposalOfHouseholdElectronics

Impact of E-Waste

A lot of harm to the environment and our health can be done as a result of not properly disposing of e-waste. "Air can be polluted when scavengers burn electronic waste to get the copper. If not disposed of properly, toxins from electronic waste can enter the soil and water supplies" (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/the-global-cost-of-electronic-waste/502019/).

And in the process of harvesting for more new material, habitats are destroyed generating a tremendous impact on wildlife. Habitat preservation is a key piece for a sustainable community.

In cell phones, for example, "there are tiny pieces of gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum (coltan), minerals that are all mined from the earth. These minerals are used to fuse circuits and hold our phones together, but the high demand for these finite resources has been linked to incredible violence and habitat destruction in the areas where they are mined" (http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/jane-goodall-recycling-phones/).

You can read more about habitat destruction and some of its impacts on websites like The National Wildlife Federation, Welcome Wildlife, and WWF among others.

If materials can be recovered and reused instead, the need for harvesting new will be less and the damage caused to habitats will also decrease.