Bowman Saves Earth From Old TV Toxins

Laura Bowman, an AHS junior, spearheaded a project to collect television sets for proper disposal and recycling. Bowman said she is interested in recycling and doing things in an environmentallyresponsible way. "I think everyone should do something," she said.- photo by David Pugh Laura Bowman, Archbold High School junior, said she has always been interested in recycling, and has lived a "green" lifestyle for a long time.

She saw television sets out at the curb, waiting for the garbage truck, and knew those sets would be thrown in a landfill.

Bowman knew televisions contained a variety of metals that are toxic to the environment. Those metals can be removed and used again.

In a landfill, the toxic metals leech out of the old sets and into the soil, and pollute the ground water.

As the nation begins to switch to digital TV broadcast, hundreds of thousands of televisions are rendered obsolete.

"I figured a lot of people would be getting rid of TVs and getting new ones, so I thought of having people collect them and bring them to my church," she said.

"I would store them for a while, then take them in for recycling."

Start

Bowman started the recycling project after the cross country season ended. She announced to Zion Mennonite members that people who wanted to safely dispose of old TVs could place them on a table in the lobby.

They were taken to Tom Short's barn, east of Archbold.

She had help from Zion Mennonite Youth Fellowship, a youth group for high school students. Jay Short, Jacob Nafziger, and Michael Volkman helped move the TVs.

Help was needed because some of the TVs were big and heavy.

"The really old ones were just huge, massive- lengthwise and widthwise. We had some little ones, but most were pretty big old ones," she said.

Safe, Responsible

It took research to find a place that would recycle old electronics responsibly.

She saw a television documentary about a community in China, where electronics are recycled.

"People with torches were busting them (old televisions) to get out all the various metals. There's a river of toxins going through this community, and there's electronic scraps everywhere. Everyone's getting sick.

"It really made me fired up to know what we were recycling was going to a good place where they would do it responsibly," Bowman said.

By February, she had collected 24 televisions. After two days of weather delays, she had the old sets loaded on a trailer owned by Mark Nafziger, an MYF sponsor, and they were off to the Lucas County Solid Waste Management site.

"Their system was, you just take a car, and you go through the warehouse. They have people there to take your TV, and you keep going. There were a whole bunch of people working there.

"They saw us come in with all these TVs, and they said, 'Okay, we've got work,' so everybody jumped in to get all the TVs out of the trailer.

"It was really nice to see everyone so surprised that we had so many. It was really cool to see how many people were working. When we got there, there was this huge mountain of electronics. It was unbelievable how much they had collected," she said.

Next

Bowman said she'd like to try a collection next year of used computers.

"I've had a lot of people ask me about computers.

"The only thing I'm leery about is data security.

"If I could get information about how to do that safely, if there is a good place to recycle the computers where they will be taken care of responsibly- I have a lot of people I could contact," she said.

Bowman said she has seen computers at the curb on Archbold's unlimited pickup days, or as she calls them, "major trash days."

In fact, she said recently, she saw "a TV and a couple of computers" at the curb.

"Man, they should have taken the TV to me," she said.

(Editor's note: Triangular Processing, an arm of the Fulton County Board of Developmental Disabilities, will accept old computers for recycling.)