New Recycle by Mail Program for Ink Jet Cartridges and Cell Phones
The City of O’Fallon and Waste Management have teamed up to offer a brand new and exciting recycling program for residents. You have the opportunity to voluntarily participate in the new program by recycling your old ink jet cartridges and cell phones and it won’t cost you any money! How often do you hear those words these days?
It’s easy to participate. Simply stop by City Hall, the Library, the Public Safety Facility, Hart’s Food & Drug, First Bank or Bank of O’Fallon and pick up a recycling bag. Each bag is postage paid and has  the City of O’Fallon logo printed on the front as well as a bar code identifying our City. All you have to do is insert your cartridge or cell phone into the bag, seal it and drop it in the mail. Waste Management is providing the bags to the City at no cost.
If your cartridge is too large for the bag, you may drop the cartridge at City Hall. Waste Management is providing postage paid boxes for City departments to use and we will include your large used cartridges with ours.
The items are delivered to CORE Recycling Concepts who then salvages the parts from cell phones, selling what they can on the open market and disposing of the remainder in an environmentally approved manner. They recycle 100% of ink jet cartridges. Each quarter CORE sends a check to Waste Management for the items processed for our City. Waste Management then shares 65% of the proceeds with us.
You may be asking yourself why you should participate in this program. While this program will not generate huge amounts of revenue for the City, it will generate some dollars that could be used to fund other recycling initiatives. It is also an environmentally friendly way to dispose of items that you may be throwing in the trash.
If you are currently donating your old cell phones or ink jet cartridges to other charitable organizations, you should continue to do so, but if you are placing them in your trash, please consider using this new program.
O’Fallon is the first community in the St. Louis Metro area that Waste Management has asked to participate in the program. We, along with Waste Management consider this program to be a win-win for everyone. We not only protect our environment for future generations but we also help the economy by participating in the recycling of used products.
Waste Management may add other items to the program once its success has been determined. If you have questions about the program, please contact Pam Funk at pfunk@ofallon.org or call 624-4500 ext. 9-1112.
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