A real waste

Although it’s the actual hunt that gets most of the lip service among dedicated sportsmen, it’s the due diligence that ultimately determines a successful outing.
Real outdoorsmen don’t rely simply on blind, dumb luck.
But if you’re a true hunter or angler, you probably know this already. You make sure your equipment is in order, you scout, you study patterns, you keep up with new regulations and you make yourself aware of trends that are beneficial or even detrimental to your specific sport and the outdoors.
It’s part of being a good steward of the earth, and isn’t that – again ultimately – the principal definition of a true outdoorsman, whether you are a woman or a man?
It would make no sense on opening day of deer season, for instance, that you might spend all day in your stand only to litter the ground below with discarded candy wrappers or soda cans.
I am, of course, not so naive to know it doesn’t happen – or even worse. Sadly, there are poachers and other inconsiderate, narcissistic wretches among us.
And, of course, who hasn’t at one time inadvertently stepped on or tripped over a sacred cow of nature? Even John Muir, I have read, used to take pot shots at seagulls just for fun.
And so it is that I recently discovered I had been guilty of an ecological no-no out of pure ignorance. The trouble is, though, is that being in the business of the outdoors, I should have known I was committing a stinking deed.
In a recent rage of domestic de-cluttering, I piled a mound of household junk on the curb that I had been harboring for a couple decades. Buried among the debris was an old TV and computer monitor that had been forsaken for the current flat-screen technology.
And dutifully, our trash service not only hauled off the electronic gadgetry, but all the other ’80s artifacts that had been bulldozed up against my basement walls. Trouble is the whole pile – along with similar piles all across the country – are being bulldozed into our landfills. Most of the stuff probably is not much a problem. It’s the TVs, hard drives, monitors, telephones, batteries and other assorted plastic-encased electronic scrap that most definitely is.
“Three billion units of consumer electronics potentially will become scrap between 2003 and 2010,” cited PC Magazine in its April 2008 issue.
OK, sounds like a lot – but is it? Well, to put it into perspective, that’s nine gadgets into the dump for every person currently living in the United States. And it only stands to get worse shortly after the first of the year when people may decide to junk their analog televisions rather than go out and get the proper digital converter equipment.
“My fear is that in the next two years we could end up seeing 45,000 tons of television waste hitting the waste stream somewhere,” warned Bob Akers of Surplus Exchange here in Kansas City.
“Whoa, Bob … are you talking about nationwide?” I asked.
“No, that’s just our community.”
Akers recently took me on a tour of the warehouse of the electronic recycling center, a Kansas City non-profit in the West Bottoms.
There were rows and rows, stacks and stacks of dead or dying electronics. It was a good news/bad news revelation for me. The bad news is that there is so much electronic junk and what I was seeing was only a fraction of the stuff – and in Kansas City only. The good news was that so many people had, in fact, brought it here for the proper disposal.
We walked up to one of those wooden console TV Cyclops from the 1970s.
“A television this size will have up to 10 pounds of lead in it,” he said.
The issue is not so much the bulk of electronic junk that will be going into our landfills, but the toxic nature of it.
Lead. Mercury. Plastics.
And what goes into landfills doesn’t stay in landfills. It seeps into the water table, into streams, then rivers and, eventually, the food source and, finally, us.
As Akers and I wandered around, over and under the mounds of discarded devices, I was absolutely dumbstruck by the volume.
“This issue is critically important,” he said. “Everything you see in this room could be classified as toxic or hazardous waste. This is a mass health issue. Hopefully, our society is starting to learn, starting to understand, there is going to be life here in 200, 500 years. We can’t be poisoning our future.”
So how dumb am I – trying to be a responsible outdoorsman, but turning around and dumping an old TV and computer screen out on the curb?
Shame on me, and shame on anyone who doesn’t seek out a responsible electronic recycling center. And it’s not just an individual responsibility, but a corporate and governmental duty.
Recognizing the potential catastrophic impact of electronic waste, the Dell Computer Corporation began Asset Recovery Services, a program that would safely dispose of “IT assets.”   One of the first organizations to take advantage is the Missouri Department of Conservation that is now disposing of its tonnage of old computers, monitors and printers through Dell, which ships it to a Texas recovery facility for safe recycling or destruction. Burying the stuff in mass quantities is not a solution nor even an option.
Yeah, I know there are some who might question whether this even has a place in a space that traditionally deals only with the aspects of hunting, fishing and the outdoors.
Well, certainly not every week, I grant you.
But I believe it is important to remind ourselves every now and then about the big picture of what we, as sportsmen, are dedicated to – our natural world.
We demand among ourselves that we conduct ourselves ethically and act with the highest of standards. We would not shoot a deer or a duck out of season – nor should we flip a soda can out our car window or, in the future, bury our iPod at Wounded Knee.
There are excellent Internet sites that explain many convenient options of equipment. The Conservation Department recommends:  www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm.
Or simply put “recycle computer” in your search engine or go to Surplus Exchange’s Web site at www.surplusexchange.org.