Recycling drive-thru a success

PEABODY – NextPhase took back nearly 34 tons of electronics equipment Saturday during their free recycling drive-thru at the company’s headquarters in Peabody.”Cars were lined up all along Centennial Drive,” said Justin Drake of Schwartz Communications, the public relations agency handling the event. “They were lined up all the way to Marriot. It was a great success.”Schwartz said cars started lining up around 8:30 a.m. for the 10 a.m. start.”Over 400 cars went through,” Schwartz said. “At a rate of about 100 cars per hour.”NextPhase Director Chris Adam couldn’t believe how large the turnout was.”The take back event exceeded our expectations,” Adam said. “The amount we collected on Saturday is equivalent to what one midsize company may discard in just one year.”From just 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., NextPhase collected approximately 500 CRT monitors, typically used for televisions and computers, more than 425 desktop PCs and laptops, 189 printers and over 700 other IT hardware and electronic items such as keyboards, stereos and cell phones.Enough equipment was collected to fill three 53-foot tractor-trailers, totaling up to two tons of lead and other hazardous chemicals that would have otherwise been disposed of in landfills.”We’re really happy with how it went,” said Schwartz, adding that events like this are a good opportunity for the community to get involved.Adam said the event “highlights not only the importance of companies properly disposing of IT assets, but also the necessity to ensure proper safeguarding and destruction of critical data to truly engage in secure IT asset disposal.”All items collected were “securely destroyed and properly recycled” by NextPhase, who worked in conjunction with their recycling partner M&K Recovery Group. Schwartz said items were remanufactured, donated and reused, or broken down and recycled part by part. If hard disks were still in working condition, for example, all information was removed and then reused. The important thing was to keep these items far away from any landfills.This wasn’t the first time NextPhase, a division of Converge, an independent distributor of electronic components, helped the environment by holding recycling events. According to a company statement, they prevented “more than 35 million pounds of excess, obsolete, and retired electronic equipment from landfills” in 2006.Community members who participated in the environment-friendly event received a certificate for recycling for their efforts.