A non-profit/municipality/corporate partnership: innovative model for collecting end-of-life electronics

Abstract

Residential collection rates and public awareness of properly disposing/recycling of computer equipment are still low. Although many computer collection schemes exist, e.g. OEM recycling offers, donation, resale, municipality events, etc., participation rates suggests residential users are continuing to store outdated computer equipment and/or disposing of equipment improperly. In order to continue to build awareness for properly recycling end-of-life computer equipment and investigate innovative partnerships, several interested stakeholders agreed in early 2004 to form a partnership that would leverage the distinctive experiences and skills of each partner. The goals of the partnership, and subsequent pilot program, were to: (1) improve the collection volumes of residential computer equipment in the target area; (2) provide additional methods for residential consumers to reuse/recycle their electronics; (3) conduct surveys that would provide behavior/perception data and lessons learned for other stakeholders and interested communities; (4) continue to educate the public through a highly-publicized program; and (5) develop a best practices guidebook for other communities to use when launching similar programs. This unique partnership consisted of a non-profit organization, a municipality, and a private/corporate entity - in this case, Goodwill Industries of Central Texas, the City of Austin, and Dell Inc. A one-year pilot program, titled the Austin Computer Recycling Project, was launched in October 2004 in order to meet the goals of the project and gather and evaluate data to determine program effectiveness, track volumes of equipment collected, record demographics and program participants, understand consumer behavior and barriers to recycling, and test the underlying fundamentals of such partnerships. A second paper is published to evaluate the results of the pilot program.