Dive Brief:
- Mississippi Power’s proactive approach to recycling recently passed a milestone, hosting its 20th annual Bring It! Hazardous Waste Collection Day, an event for Harrison County residents.
- Plant Watson compliance specialist and program coordinator Michael Metz thanked the residents for the volume of waste collected.
- Hundreds of thousands of pounds of household waste were collected at the Hazardous Waste Collection Day. Some of items collected included 80,000 pounds of electronic scrap; 220,000 pounds of paint; 1,600 tires, and 795 cars.
Dive Insight:
Nationwide, utility providers, green groups and even nonprofits like Habitat For Humanity have become involved with recycling used items. Some nonprofits, like Habit’s Re-Store in Pittsburgh’s Swissvale neighborhood, no longer accept old TVs because of the difficulty of recycling these items, which can cost processors to handle, rather than netting profit for them. Industry experts point to a need for easier donations of recyclables, which in the case of e-waste, often costs the consumer to discard. Events such as Bring It make it easier for consumers to recycle, while generating large amounts of usable material.
