(Updated at 10:10 a.m.) Over the next week, Arlington residents have two chances to take one more step in spring cleaning: recycling household goods and electronics.
This Saturday, Arlington is hosting its biannual E-CARE recycling event at Thomas Jefferson Middle School (125 S. Old Glebe Road), allowing residents to dropoff hazardous household goods to be disposed of responsibly.
The event will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. According to Arlington’s Department of Environmental Services, these are the items residents can bring and have recycled:
- Automotive fluids
- Car care products
- Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)
- Corrosives (acids/caustics)
- Fire extinguishers
- Flammable solvents
- Fluorescent tubes
- Fuels/petroleum products
- Household cleaners
- Lawn and garden chemicals
- Mercury
- Paint products (25-can limit)
- Photographic chemicals
- Poisons (pesticides)
- Propane gas cylinders (small hand-held or larger)
- Swimming pool chemicals
Explosives and ammunition, medical wastes, asbestos, freon and radioactive materials are among the items Arlington won’t accept. Residents can also bring small metal items like pots and pans, computer monitors and old TVs, keyboards, scanners and phones to be recycled.
Next Wednesday, April 22 — on the 45th anniversary of Earth Day — the Crystal City Business Improvement District will hold a recycling event of their own, more focused on electronics and office supplies.
The annual Power Purge and Shred is from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. next Wednesday at 1900 Crystal Drive. Unwanted documents and electronics will be recycled and, if you so choose, the former will be shredded and destroyed. There’s also a “hard drive crusher” on site, allowing you to “watch your data storage device be rendered useless,” the BID says on its website.
The Purge and Shred will accept batteries, old electronics — including monitors and microwaves — and will accept old, incandescent light bulbs. In exchange for the old lightbulbs, the Arlington Initiative to Rethink Energy will give recyclers a new LED bulb.
Crystal City’s Power Purge has recycled nearly 140 tons of electronics since the event’s inception. This year, the event will also include a photo contest, with a free class at the nearby TechShop as the prize.
Both sites will be accepting old bikes and donating them to Bikes for the World, which takes old, used bikes and repairs them, giving the new and improved bicycles to impoverished people overseas.
Image via Arlington County. Disclosure: Crystal City BID is an ARLnow.com advertiser.