A pile of old computers and monitors accumulated outside the St. Mark Lutheran Church on Saturday. Pastor Adam Wutka sat at the end of a long table, destroying the magnetic platter inside a hard drive. Meanwhile, his sons Ben and Nathan were talking to Renee Demel from the IT department of Barton Community College, who was showing them different parts inside a dismantled PC.
“This is a video card,” Demel said. “It plugs into the monitor.”

A few feet away, Stan Hatesohl, congregation president at St. Mark, was carrying busted electronics into a waiting trailer.

This was the third year for the church to offer a one-day collection site for electronic waste — unwanted items such as cell phones, computers and accessories, charger cords, microwaves and VCRs. The items were placed in a special trailer designated for E-waste recycling.

“We do this once a year as a service to the community and to be good stewards of God’s earth by keeping as much of this out of the landfill as possible,” said Connie Karlin, stewardship chairman at St. Mark. “Each year it has been well received,” she said, adding more than a ton of electronic waste has been gathered each year.
“The trailer was absolutely filled last year,” Karlin said. “We try to do this ... right around graduation when students get new computers.”
This year, the service was open from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, and volunteers collected 3,340 pounds of electronics. “A cloudy and cool day, well worth it,” Karlin said. “Kudos to Phil Hathcock at the Barton County Landfill for getting us the recycling trailer.”
Solid Waste Director Hathcock delivered the trailer to the church parking lot at 21st and Jackson and will see to its removal. The E-waste trailer is usually at the landfill and is available year round.
Many of the items dropped off Saturday appeared to be past their prime. A cassette tape player was on the table next to a PC with a floppy disc drive. “This hard drive is so old it has Phillips screws in it,” Wutka commented.
The electronics trailer will eventually go to the Rice County E-Waste Recycling site in Lyons, which is funded in part by the solid waste tipping fee fund from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
E-waste is bad for the environment because it often contains toxic components such as mercury, lead, cadmium, flame retardants, battery acids, barium and lithium. But it also contains valuable, recoverable materials such as aluminum, copper, gold, silver, plastics, and ferrous metals.