According to Todd Darden, assistant city manager, the volunteer effort will be targeting electronic products that have reached the end of their useful lives, such as old computers and monitors, cable television converter boxes and fax machines.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing segments of waste in this country, and we need to turn our attention toward recycling those items instead of increasing the burden on our landfills,” said Darden.

Electronic items, Darden said, must be handled differently from other waste items because their components can cause damage to the environment. Those special handling requirements have strained the budgets and resources of waste-disposal personnel throughout the state, he added.

“Some people aren’t aware of how much lead is actually contained in a computer monitor,” said Darden. “Also, things like cell phone batteries and other electronic items can contain very hazardous materials, so they need to be handled differently.”

Keep Big Spring Beautiful and the city will set up a collection point Saturday at the corner of E. First Street and Johnson — from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Among the items that will be collected are batteries (excluding car and truck batteries), computer components, including cables, parts and components, keyboards, modems, printers, scanners and networking hardware; phone and PDA-related items such as cell batteries, pagers,voicemail and answering machine systems, video cameras and citizen band radio hardware.

No televisions or television screens will be accepted, according to e-waste pamphlets.

Darden said statistics show more than 1.5 million new computers are bought annually in Texas, with less than 175,000 of the old units being recycled.

“That leaves more than 1.3 million old computers that can be assumed to be either stored or sent to landfills every year (in the state),” Darden said. “That’s a lot.”

People disposing of their old computers are urged to either remove or destroy the hard drives before turning the units over for collection.

For more information on the e-waste collection, contact Debbie Wegman or Bobby McDonald at 263-1234.

Contact Staff Writer Thomas Jenkins at 263-7331 ext. 232 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it