How St. Charles became one of the last bastions of electronics recycling

When St. Charles Public Works employees come to work next Thursday, they will likely find an unprecedented mountain of televisions outside their offices. That's because just about all of the unwanted TVs and other electronics Batavia and Geneva citizens no longer want will come to St. Charles as of Dec. 16.

The reasons for St. Charles' newfound environmental burden are equal parts money, crime and politics.

Kane County officials oversee local electronics recycling efforts in partnership with communities that host drop-off locations and eWorks Electronic Services, a recycling company. The county board's Energy and Environmental Committee terminated recycling agreements with Batavia and Geneva Wednesday. The vote was a formality. The municipalities have either ceased or are in the process of ending their electronics recycling efforts. Part of those local decisions stem from a desire to move away from the labor and injury costs involved with loading the 50-foot recycling trailers. But a big part is the evaporation of any local profits associated with electronic recycling. In 2012 the county received $55,000 for its end of the program. Now the county's recycling coordinator, Jennifer Jarland, just feels lucky the county isn't losing money.

Electronics recycling went from a cash positive venture to a money loser when local demand for electronics recycling began to far outpace what manufacturers were required by law to pay for. Illinois law made manufacturers financially responsible for electronics recycling costs in 2011. But Jarland said the law also set the mandated recycling goals too low compared to consumer demand. As a result, the manufacturers typically hit the goal by midyear and stop paying for any more recycling. Meanwhile, the TVs, which are about 60 percent, by weight, of the volume of local recycling, continue to stack up throughout the year. Local governments that host the drop-offs eat the cost.

"The idea is to collect whatever people want to bring," Jarland said. "Recyclers want to recycle more. It's the manufacturers that don't want to pay. And that's the problem. Unfortunately what the manufacturers are selling are all tiny, lightweight devices. And their recycling goals are all based on that little weight. But what we're receiving are all these gargantuan TVs coming out of peoples' basements en masse. They'll arrive with a truck with five TVs. We're just being completely inundated. And we don't know when it will end. It's just increasing and increasing."

Those giant TVs in towns like Batavia and Geneva can fill up to three large trailers every week. That's too much cost, and perhaps too much of a headache, for those communities to eat. The answer is to either change state law to increase the amount of recycling manufacturers must fund or find a way to reduce the local cost when the payments stop. That's where St. Charles comes in.

Jarland says St. Charles uses people needing to complete community restitution as the labor force for its program. Crimes against the local community are repaid by helping recycle unwanted local electronics. Batavia and Geneva don't have such a program. The Kane County sheriff's office stopped using jail inmates in community restitution programs several years ago, as Jarland learned when she sought to enlist them to keep Batavia and Geneva's programs alive. But the question going forward is, can St. Charles handle the new burden?

"We hope so," Jarland said. "We talked to them, and they assured us they know what's coming. But you just don't know how much (stuff) is going to come."

St. Charles officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.