Swimming in electric junk?

In our quest to keep you informed of local places you can get rid of old electronics in a non-polluting way, there's this event coming up this Saturday: At Cedarbrook Middle School (300 Longfellow Road, Wyncote) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. you can ditch any number of worn-out TVs, computers, scanners, floppy disks, radios, toasters or other electronics for a fee of $1.00 per pound.

Why would you want to pay to dispose of such things? Well, the proceeds will benefit Cheltenham District Schools in conjunction with the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, so you can think of it that way. But more than that, it's part of Christopher Swain's TOXTOUR, "an environmental education campaign designed to improve the health of our oceans and our world."

You may or may not recall Christopher Swain as the guy who swims various rivers, and even oceans, to raise awareness of environmental pollution, and if you check out his site you may be surprised to learn where your electronic trash "disappears" to. As the event announcement says, "Nothing we collect will be tipped into landfills, incinerated as solid waste, or dumped in developing countries!"

As Swain points out on his site, dumping trash on the other side of the globe or in our own waterways was once "business as usual," but "now there is a worldwide awareness that we need to change our behavior, or face the prospect of turning our world into a place that we might not be able to live." If you've wanted to dip a toe into the world of ethical electronics recycling, here's a chance to take the plunge.