After 300 vehicles dumped nearly 30 tons of potentially toxic electronics waste in a Wal-Mart parking lot in a northeastern Arizona town last August, Mark Shaffer was hooked. He wanted to collect more electronics waste in more towns across the state.

“We got Wal-Mart to lend us a portion of their parking lot and two forklifts,” says Shaffer, communications director for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. “After Show Low, I really got hooked on the possibilities of this.”

The first of 16 free electronics recycling events so far during the past nine months, put on by ADEQ and local municipalities, had been a success. The challenge since that first event has been convincing people in other towns to participate in the free electronics recycling events by educating them about the potential dangers of throwing away unwanted electronic devices in conventional landfills and by simply getting the word out.

Since last August, similar events in Williams, Payson, Globe/Miami, Superior, Nogales, Tucson, Sun City West, Lake Havasu City, Casa Grande, Camp Verde, Cottonwood and the Phoenix metropolitan area have helped the department collect more than 145 tons of recyclable material.

ADEQ and other environmental advocates say discarded electronics can release dangerous pollutants and heavy metals into the environment. E-Waste Harvesters of Phoenix, one of several groups, businesses and local governments helping organize the events, aims to give people a safe and legal place to dump their old computers, television screens and other “e-waste.”

“The primary concern is the chemicals and the elements that are in them,” says Earl Campbell, president of E-Waste Harvesters. “When they go in a landfill and get broken, they can wind up in your drinking water.”

Campbell says many people don’t realize that simple household items like computer monitors are made with toxic materials like lead, mercury, copper and cadmium. There are also some cancer-causing materials, like polychlorinated biphenyls, built into ordinary electronics.

“Even storing broken equipment can contaminate the environment with phosphorous,” he says.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter, says free electronic waste recycling programs can help the environment in two ways.

“One is, of course, they ensure that electronics are recycled properly,” says Bahr. “It takes them out of the waste stream and reduces the chances of causing contamination. But they also provide a public education component.”

Bahr and Campbell agree that the more that people know about the dangers of electronic waste, the less likely they are to inadvertently harm the environment.

“A lot of people do things that are harmful to the environment because they don’t know,” Bahr says. “They don’t know it’s bad to dump at the landfill. I think the public education benefits are large.”

Shaffer says the department decided to start the electronics recycling program at the beginning of last year, knowing that state budget woes meant money for recycling programs would be cut.

“All that money was swept and we were wondering where to go next with this,” Shaffer says.

The idea was proposed by then-new department Director Ben Grumbles. Grumbles is the former assistant administrator for the Office of Water at the Environmental Protection Agency, and has experience in bringing public and private parties together to solve environmental problems.

“This is what we came up with,” Shaffer says. “All of this material can basically be recycled.”

Doyle Wilson, director of public works for Lake Havasu City, says his community’s event lasted four hours and collected nearly 15 tons of material.

“I think we had a very good turnout,” he says. “We had a message to the citizens here: If we start this up as a continuous event, then people can start saving their electronics and bring them to the event instead of trashing them.”

Sharon Winters, manager of Gila County’s Department of Recycling and Landfill Management, says the events in Globe/Miami and Payson were both very successful and helped citizens who had no idea what to do with their old computers, fax machines and other electronics.

“We have free electronic recycling at the landfill all the time, but some people find that inconvenient,” Winters says. “This time, we set up on the side of the highway and people were excited to bring their things by.”

The city of Winslow’s event saw 63 vehicles bring in more than five tons of electronic waste. Joe Jarvis, code compliance officer for Winslow, says he was a little disappointed with the turnout, but he was pleased with the local Hopi Tribe’s participation.

“Schools from the tribe brought electronic material that’s been in their school rooms for months and got rid of it without any expense to the Hopi Tribe,” he says.

Jarvis had hoped for more participation from citizens and organizations in Winslow, but he thinks that turnout will improve over time.

“I think it was because it was the first event and people had such short notice,” he says. “But I was happy with the 10,000 pounds we did collect.”

Shaffer is pleased with the results the department has had with the program so far, and that the public seems to be getting the message.

“We’ve now got people coming to us, rather than us going to them,” Shaffer says. “That’s a great sign.”