Cornell University
OP-20: Electronic Waste Recycling Program

Cornell University's solid waste and recycling operation, R5 Operations, collects electronic waste at all Cornell facilities. R5 Operations staff are professional, trained material handlers, and members of the Tompkins-Cortland Counties Building Trades Council, Maintenance Division Union. R5 Operations staff are provided the vehicles and tools to safely move electronic equipment. Electronics are stored in the R5 Operations facility while waiting for transport by vendor; this is a secure facility. The current electronic recycling vendor is Sunnking, Inc. which has Responsible Recycling (R2) Practices certification (http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/r2practices.htm), disassembles all products within the United States, is located locally in Brockport, NY, and has a 97% recycle rate. Sunnking, Inc. shreds all hard drives and provides Cornell with a certificate of destruction for each load of materials.

The electronic waste recycling program is a function of the University's solid waste and recycling operation, R5 Operations. Electronics are collected during routine daily recycling collection stops, are collected upon request, and are collected during building clean-outs. Any staff member at the University may request an item be collected for recycling. R5 Operations owns and operates a machine to degauss hard drives, as needed, prior to destruction. Cornell recycled 108.49 tons of electronic waste in 2011. Accepted electronics include, but is not limited to: Monitors, CPUs and hard drives, keyboards, circuit boards, cables, mice, printers, copiers, microwave ovens, televisions, cell phones, fax machines, power cords, extension cords, power strips, answering machines, fax machines, typewriters, pagers, cameras, VCR/DVD players, CD's, remote controls, and radios/stereos/tapes/records/8 track tape players.

The electronic waste recycling program for students is multifaceted. Electronics are collected through Student and Academic Services in residence halls. Depending on the item and time of year electronics are collected and transferred to R5 Operations for recycling and destruction or are inventoried and sold through the annual "Dump and Run" program. Students also may donate personal computers to the student run Cornell Computer Reuse Association where computers are refurbished and donated. The website for this organization is http://rso.cornell.edu/ccra/.