Oct 4, 2018 3 min read

Tempers flared Sept. 4 as the mercury climbed to 92 degrees and hundreds of people converged on Washington Mall to rid themselves of televisions and broken or otherwise unwanted electronics and appliances.

Lisa Cessna, executive director of the Washington County Planning Commission, which oversees recycling projects, announced Wednesday that changes will be made in the program for the final collection of the year on Nov. 6, such as limiting the participants to Washington County residents.

“It was a little chaotic,” Cessna said after a Washington County commissioners’ agenda-setting meeting.

“We just had a very large crowd, so we had long wait times. A lot of people were very understanding that we were doing the best we could, but some weren’t.”

Vehicles waiting to drop off did not tie up Oak Springs Road, “but we had to reconfigure our lines and cram people in a little tighter than we wanted to,” Cessna continued, making it difficult for drivers to exit. “We had well over 600 cars.”

She estimated drivers of 100 cars left because they did not want to wait an hour and 20 minutes – the average time – to drop off their items.

At the Washington County Fairgrounds, where the electronics collections were previously held, the county averaged 350 vehicles.

In an attempt to limit the size of the crowd, electronics recycling will now be limited to residents of Washington County, and county employees will be checking driver’s licenses.

“We know we’re getting them from Ohio and West Virginia,” Cessna said.

The collections are scheduled from 2 to 5 p.m. People began arriving at 1 p.m. Sept. 4 and 100 cars were in line by the time unloading began.

Planning department staff worked until 6 p.m. and employees of the vendor stayed at the site until early the next morning.

Because the last collection had been in June, there was perhaps a backlog.

Commission Vice Chairman Diana Irey Vaughan said she was given a flier advertising the collection that was made in-house at a South Hills electronics store, and a clerk asked her, “Do you know where Washington County is?”

To handle the influx of traffic and provide security, the commissioners voted Thursday to hire two South Strabane Township uniformed police officers and patrol cars at a rate of $60 per hour per officer.

The county has been collecting recyclable electronics for a few years at the fairgrounds in Arden, but the site was moved to the mall lot near the former theaters because it offered more space.

Participants should enter and exit the lot at the mall entrance on Oak Springs Road across from the Big Lots store.

Acceptable items include computer equipment such as monitors, towers and bases, mice, keyboards and speakers; tablet computers, printers, televisions, freon appliances, fluorescent tubes, CFL bulbs and most household appliances.

Vacuum cleaners, carpet scrubbers, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are not accepted.

Most items will be collected free of charge, but participants looking to recycle damaged or dismantled TVs will be charged a $50 hazardous substance handling fee. The program also charges participants $1 per CFL bulb and fluorescent tube and $15 for appliances containing Freon. Participants are limited to one TV per car at each collection.

Since its start in 2016, the collection has served more than 7,000 people and taken in more than 640,000 pounds of material. Washington County partners with JVS Environmental Services, which recycles electronics.