The dead gray-and-black television was sitting near the front door, waiting for me to make a decision.

My daughter, Julie, had already replaced it with an identical $89 TV from Wal-Mart. I could hear the new one chattering away upstairs in her bedroom.

But I still couldn’t believe Julie’s original TV was broken — it had lasted only three months.

And I was torn whether to take it somewhere to be fixed or haul it out to the street to end up in a landfill as electronic trash, or “e-waste.”

Mounting problem

Kansas landfills already are getting mountains of such discarded electronic equipment.

And it’s only getting worse — most computers and monitors have lifespans of only three to four years. And some electronic components become broken or obsolete after months, not years.

To hold down the tonnage of such “e-waste,” a test recycling program is under way in Emporia, sponsored by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

“Everybody has some type of electronic waste that they have to dispose of,” said Keith Senn, who’s running the 10-day program in Emporia in his role as the city’s solid waste supervisor.

Senn is collecting e-waste through Tuesday from residents and business owners in Lyon and Chase counties. The city is accepting collections at no charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Saturday and Monday through Tuesday, and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Emporia’s Recycling Center.

Since the program started Saturday, Senn has collected about 12 tons of old electronics, filling two 28-foot-long trailers.

The trailers are filled with cell phones, computer monitors and various other computer components, televisions, VCRs and stereos — “just a little bit of everything.”

Dismantling and recycling

The e-waste will be hauled off by Envirocycle Inc., a Hallstead, Pa., recycling company. It provides an environmentally safe dismantle program for TV displays, office products and consumer electronics.

Envirocycle will recycle just about everything collected, including cathode ray tube glass, plastics, metal and heavy metal, Senn told me.

“They say there will be very little waste when everything is said and done. Anything that is hazardous will be disposed of properly if it cannot be reused,” Senn said.

Keith Senn, solid waste supervisor for Emporia, part 1 Keith Senn, solid waste supervisor for Emporia, part 2 Mollie Mangerich, operations supervisor, Lawrence Waste Reductiona nd Recycling Dvision, part 1 Mollie Mangerich, operations supervisor, Lawrence Waste Reductiona nd Recycling Dvision, part 2 KDHE – Kansas Don’t Spoil It! City of Lawrence guide to computer and electronic recycling

The Emporia program is one of two areas in the state that are part of the Kansas Don’t Spoil It! program. A similar program is going on in Seward County in southwest Kansas to help conserve landfill space.

“Electronic waste management is a challenge for Kansas and the rest of the country,” Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said in announcing the project.

KDHE is expected to take the lessons learned in the two recycling projects to formulate a statewide program.

Advance disposal fees?

Mollie Mangerich, operations supervisor at Lawrence’s Waste Reduction and Recycling Division, said she was very interested in what the state would do in the future about electronic waste.

Nationally, there’s a movement to put less electronic waste into landfills, Mangerich said.

Many far-thinking environmentalists are working with local and state governments and the electronics industry on cost-effective ways to completely recycle broken or obsolete items.

Buzzwords such as “remanufacture” and “disassembly” are becoming common. Also under discussion is the prospect of building “advance disposal fees,” or ADFs, into the retail prices of electronic products, Mangerich said.

“We could ship it back to the manufacturer and they would have that cost of disassembly and recycling attached to its product price,” Mangerich said.

Some electronics manufacturers also are working on “take-back” programs, where they will reuse the components in your obsolete electronics.

“I think that the real answer to electronic waste is manufacturer take-back and what we call product stewardship,” Mangerich said.

Meanwhile, the mountain is growing.

Currently, in Kansas, it’s still legal to toss out your TV at the curb with the rest of your trash. And throw-away electronics are becoming the norm, Senn said.

“My mother and father, when they bought a TV and it broke, they had it worked on. TVs now, it’s just as economical, typically, to buy a new one as it is to have it worked on,” he said. “I think there’s more throw-away stuff than there used to be.”

Hand-me-downs

Katy pointed at Julie’s broken TV sitting near the doorway.

“What’s up with the TV?”

I told her my dilemma — I could either take it to a repair shop to get it fixed and probably spend more money than I paid for it, or throw it away.

I also told her that there might be a glimmer of life left in it. A computer technician had told me all the TV might need is a new fuse.

Still, even if I fixed it, Julie’s TV had already been replaced, so I wasn’t sure if it was worth the effort.

Katy, who’s always looking for something new for her student apartment, reminded me that there are other ways to recycle.

“I can always take it off your hands — if you get it fixed.”