St. Charles may be the next Kane community to end electronics recycling

St. Charles may become the latest community to zap its electronics recycling program. An onslaught of material from residents of Batavia, Geneva and beyond have turned the city's drop-off location into a junkyard of TVs and couches, city officials said this week.

Aldermen made a move toward canceling the recycling contract with the county. If that happens, West Dundee will be the only daily drop-off in the county.

In a preliminary vote, aldermen agreed to give Kane County the required 60 days notice that they intend to close their drop-off location. Mayor Ray Rogina said he's hopeful the city can work out an agreement with the county to keep the city's drop-off open.

St. Charles recently became one of the last places for daily electronics recycling in Kane County after Batavia, Elgin and Geneva closed drop-off locations in 2015. Recycling vendors stopped paying municipalities for the recycled material last summer.

St. Charles began using 50-foot trailers at the drop-off sites to reduce transportation costs. The trailers are much larger than the previous walk-in containers but more difficult to load.

St. Charles was able to keep its location running longer than most. The city's manual labor comes from people fulfilling community service hours, but that manpower is unpredictable, said John Lamb, the city's environmental services manager. Public works staff members would do whatever work remained.

That was fine until Batavia and Geneva closed drop-off sites about a month ago. That left St. Charles and West Dundee as the available drop-off locations. Lamb said it appears all the residents from Batavia and Geneva began dropping off their unwanted electronics in St. Charles. On any given day, there will be 50 TVs piled up outside the drop-off location's gates, he said.

"It's only been a month, but we've had a sudden influx of materials," Lamb said. "We post the hours of operation at the drop-off everywhere, and we still have people coming in after hours."

Lamb said TVs represent about 60 percent of what people bring to the drop-off. However, non-electronics, like couches and TV stands, can be as much as 26 percent of what's left.

"There's a lot of things going on with the program that obviously weren't the intention of the program," Lamb said.

St. Charles was already seeing bigger demand for electronics recycling when it was serving just its own residents. In 2015, the city collected 240,000 pounds of electronics, double what was collected in 2014, and that doesn't even include numbers from the final quarter of 2015.

Lamb told city aldermen Monday that Batavia and Geneva collected 321,000 pounds of electronics in 2014. St. Charles could expect to see at least that amount of added material coming to St. Charles, and likely much more, if their Tri-Cities neighbors all used St. Charles' drop-off.

Jennifer Jarland, the county's recycling coordinator, said the pending closure of the location is the latest in a series and may require changing how electronics recycling is done in the county. She believes the real answer is increasing the responsibility of electronics manufacturers to promote and fund recycling of their products.

Until then, Jarland encouraged county residents to hold on to their unwanted electronics just a little longer. The county will resume its monthly recycling drop-off events April 9. A full schedule is available on the county's website.

"I'm really just disappointed," Jarland said of the St. Charles closure. "They are just getting an inordinate amount of material. It's kind of insane."