County Engineer Darryl Lutz met with the Butler County Commission last week to discuss two items concerning electronic waste collected by the county before returning Monday to discuss promotional materials for this waste.

The first of those items presented last week was a request to approve a Memorandum of Understanding with Unicorp, a company of the federal prison system located in Leavenworth, concerning the recycling of the collected waste. Lutz told the commission such a document is generally only considered at the staff level, but he wanted to present it to them to have it formally acknowledged in their record.

The document allows for the processing of electronic waste (E-waste) at the landfill and contains a number of compliance statements for the handling of that waste in regards to the sensitive data that can be present in some cases, such as with harddrives that still have CPUs in them. With that in mind, any handling by a third party of such waste would mandate they be certified.

Lutz told the commissioners the county would document that the waste had been passed on to the third party and they would in turn notify the waste had been collected. That group would then recycle as much of the waste as they could and destroy what they couldn’t. Transportation of the waste would be provided at no expense as long as a trailer load would be provided.

Lutz said the memorandum will be sent out to Leavenworth and if the county decided to terminate that understanding, they could do so within the first 30 days. He added they are still aiming to begin E-waste on Dec. 1.

Commissioner Randy Waldorf expressed concern about the concept of the prison system handing potentially sensitive material whether or not they had certification. Lutz said it was a pilot program but pointed to other E-waste programs currently functioning as examples that the system has been shown to work. He said they also have to be certified.

The rest of the commission shared that concern but passed the motion to approve the document on a 4-1 vote with Waldorf voting against approval. Lutz told Waldorf he would try to secure more information concerning his security concerns to help him.

“I’m sure it’s fine, something just doesn’t sit right with me and sometimes you have to go with your gut,” Waldorf said.

The second item was an amendment concerning the grant contract for the E-waste program, which would provide an extension of six months to enable them to get the project costs finished. This was approved 5-0.

On Monday, Lutz presented information that would be presented in promotional materials to be released for the program.

The presentation began with it being stated the E-waste program, which is funded in part by a grant from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and Butler County Public Works, is free to households, schools and government agencies in the county. Any businesses and non-profit groups are also able to participate, but at a flat rate of 10 cents per pound of waste to be processed.

Accepted materials for processing include computers, monitors CPU’s, laptops, keyboards, cords, scanners, printers, copy machines, cell phones, pagers, answering machines, PDA’s, TV’s, microwaves, video games, fax machines, stereos, camcorders and DVD players. Such materials are classified as E-waste because they are no longer functional or have become obsolete and need to be discarded.

Some points were offered for why E-waste should be submitted to the program. First, it was stated that it would allow gold, copper, silver, plastic and steel present in those products to be recovered and recycled. Second, it was noted elements like lead and mercury can also be in those products and the landfill would be better off the less those elements were put into it. Last, it was said that the recycling process was more environmentally friendly.

Individuals interested in participating would need to take their waste to the landfill during normal business hours and follow the signs there to the scale house. Staff will be in place guide those individuals through a few steps.

For more information, contact the E-waste coordinator at 321-9278.