CHICAGO — Got electronic junk piling up around the house or garage?
Get rid of it safely at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Community Electronic Waste Collection event, scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at 3241 S. Wabash Ave. Look for the signs pointing to the collection truck.
Accepted at the dropoff site will be laptops, TVs, DVD players and “and anything else with a plug,” organizers said.
The institute's Office of Sustainability has partnered with Universal Recycling Technologies, a Janesville, Wis.-based company that will collect the items for sorting and processing.
"Electronic waste is pervasive in today's world, yet many people don't know what to do with their devices. Many are simply thrown out with the trash, which is now illegal in Illinois. A large portion have also traditionally been sold or dumped in poor Third World countries where they are often burned to recover the precious metals in a terribly polluting and unsafe manner," Brock Auerbach-Lynn, a project manager with the office of sustainability, said in a statement.
Saturday's event will the fourth "E-waste" recycling event held at the university. The latest event in March 2012 event collected more than 10,400 pounds of electronic waste.
