In this electronic age, it’s inevitable that today’s technology quickly will become tomorrow’s trash.

It’s an unusual family that doesn’t have at least one old television set or outmoded piece of computer equipment stored in a basement or closet. The prospect that much of that equipment eventually will be headed for landfills has prompted the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to start looking at better ways to dispose of electronic waste.

To get a handle on how large the problem is, KDHE is conducting special “e-waste” collections this month in Seward, Lyon and Chase counties. Bill Bider, director of the KDHE waste management bureau, then hopes to create a public-private task force to address the issue next year.

Although the federal Environmental Protection Agency has been studying the possibility that discarded equipment could pose an environmental hazard, the biggest concern of state officials is the sheer volume of debris involved. One hope, Bider said, is that as much as 90 percent of e-waste can be dismantled into components such as glass, plastic and metal that can be recycled.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of what was an expensive and state-of-the-art piece of electronic equipment, but technology marches on. Hopefully, the work of KDHE will keep us all from being buried someday by discarded computer monitors.