Darius Coleman and Ashley Garcia at East Convenience center
Darius Coleman and Ashley Garcia’s job is to — quite literally — prevent dumpster fires. And recycling bin fires. And garbage truck fires.
They do this by sorting items at the Nashville Department of Waste Services’ electronic recycling centers, separating flammable batteries from the rest of the trash and preparing electronics for recycling. Coleman says many people don’t know about the fire risk when they throw away their electronics.
“The best thing is, overall, just trying to keep it safe for everybody — for the customer too — because sometimes they don’t know,” says Coleman, convenience center supervisor of operations. “Especially with the temperatures changing and it getting hot, it can accelerate.”
Davidson County residents can bring in up to 100 pounds of electronic waste per day to the centers, and the Nashville Department of Waste Services — which also handles trash in the county — will take it from there. Electronic waste is accepted at three of the department’s four convenience centers, Tuesday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.: East Convenience Center in East Nashville, Ezell Pike Convenience Center in southeast Davidson County and Omohundro Convenience Center near Lebanon Pike.
Coleman and Garcia also attempt to intercept electronics from other recycling loads brought to the centers. Commonly accepted items include TVs, computers, cellphones, scanners, cables, small household appliances and, of course, batteries.
“Some people, they just bring, like, two pairs of double-A’s,” says Garcia, a customer service field representative senior for waste services. “That’s good, because it’s better than to mix it with your household trash.”
They see the effects of rapid churn of the tech industry, which is creating an enormous amount of material that’s ending up in landfills. A new iPhone is released, and old ones make their way to the e-recycling centers. But Garcia and Coleman say no electronics are too old. They’ve received an old projector in a briefcase that displays in black-and-white, and an antique wooden camera that looks like something out of an old Western movie. The centers are a sort of purgatory for old stereo sets, electronic keyboards, digital cameras, iPods, VCRs and TVs with VCRs built in. Davidson County residents can drop off any of those things for free, at which point the items become Metro property.
Batteries at East Convenience center
After electronics are received, Coleman and Garcia sort the items by size and nature — watch batteries here, microwaves there — in neat rows. Next, a series of organizations will pick up electronics, recycle the parts they can, and take the rest to a landfill, flammable-free.
Spring cleaning and, unfortunately, January’s winter storm have brought a recent influx of items to the county’s waste centers. But as Davidson County residents are doing their cleaning, they can also bring their hazardous chemicals to the East and Ezell Pike convenience centers: pest control, fertilizer, ammonium, bleach and flammable items. Sometimes it means Coleman and Garcia don safety suits.
“Especially household cleaning products, there’s a lot of people that buy in bulk, and they have it so long, they automatically assume that they can just throw it away,” Coleman says. “That’s not a good thing, because you don’t want to mix chemicals in the trash, and it creates fumes and gases and you may not even know it.”
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