A head start on Earth Day

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This article was published 22/04/2024 (773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Earth Day is today, but that didn’t stop the local committee from getting a head start over the weekend.

Volunteers from the Brandon Earth Day Committee set up at the Riverbank Discovery Centre, Stanley Park, Rideau Park and Lions Memorial Park to hand out equipment for residents to pick up trash with and set up drop-off points for people to bring their electronic waste to.

The organizer for the trash pick-up efforts, Nicole Ziegler, said it was the second year the committee has held the event.

It was originally supposed to start in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic put a hold on those plans.

“I’m always impressed to see how many people come out right away,” she said. “I showed up to Rideau Park and there was a whole bunch of e-waste already and three people waiting to start picking up garbage, which is awesome.”

The team that picked up the most garbage was scheduled to receive a $500 prize with second place getting $250, which the committee was asking to be donated to a local charity.

The funds for those prizes was assembled from a Friday barbecue in the parking lot of Sobeys, which Ziegler said raised more than $200, with the rest coming from a social people held at Houston’s next Friday.

Any money left over after prizes are handed out are being donated to the Assiniboine Food Forest.

Another member of the committee, Dylan Clouthier, said the organization has representatives from Assiniboine Community College, Sustainable Brandon, the food forest, all three Brandon high schools and more. He said they’d been planning Saturday’s event since February.

“There’s been a huge turnout for people just getting rid of stuff from their junk drawers, dead batteries, printers,” Clouthier said.

“As far as the garbage goes here at the Discovery Centre, we’ve had a couple of enthusiastic people coming in. They walk their dogs, we supply them with gloves, everything like that and send them on their way. Then they come back with some garbage and overall it’s looking cleaner.”

Collecting the e-waste were representatives from the Electronic Recycling Association out of Winnipeg.

“They can be anything from a toaster, hair dryer ranging all the way up to sophisticated IT equipment,” said ERA’s Jim Findley. “You can have servers, backup servers, PCs, iPads, phones. You name it, we take it — just no washers, stoves, fridges or dryers.”

When the Sun visited ERA’s main collection at the discovery centre, electronic items residents had dropped off included printers, PCs, various cables and even vintage gaming consoles.

According to Findley, ERA will take those goods back to their warehouse, where staff will sort through it to see what can be salvaged or upgraded.

“That way we can put new parts into them and donate them back out to immigration centres, schools, women’s centres, stuff like that,” he said.

“Because a lot of equipment, it’s not that it’s broken or bad, it’s just a little outdated. But with a little work, you can update some of the stuff and get it back into the hands of people that need it.”

Not only does that mean many of those items will go to people who can use them, but it’ll prevent them from going into a landfill. The more we can keep out of landfills, the better, Findley said.

Clouthier said that in Brandon, electronic waste can be dropped off at the Eastview Landfill. However, Findley said locals can also reach out to the ERA if they’re interested in running a collection drive or have a bunch of material and a pick-up can be arranged.

“We appreciate being invited out here,” Findley said. “It’s really great to collaborate with other organizations because the more we get together, the bigger an impact that we can have on reducing and recycling.”

More information on the kinds of electronic waste the Eastview Landfill accepts can be found online at brandon.ca/special-disposal-programs/e-waste.

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