New videos explain recycling at Westmoreland Cleanways center in Unity

If you’re not sure what electronics you can recycle at Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling, the Unity-based nonprofit has a video for you.

As Westmoreland Cleanways Executive Director Ellen Keefe notes in one of four new informational videos posted on the organization’s website, among the most frequent calls received at its center near Pleasant Unity are inquiries about recycling televisions and computers.

Keefe points out that Pennsylvania law prohibits landfill disposal of computers, computer printers and keyboards, televisions and any other electronic device with a screen measuring more than 5 inches. But those items are accepted at the Cleanways center.

“We’re one of the very few places that will take them,” Keefe said. “People don’t think about how to get rid of this stuff until they have to. It’s a constant question and a constant educational necessity.”

“There’s no limit on size or quantity that you bring in,” Keefe says of the television sets accepted at Cleanways.

She noted there’s no charge for recycling a TV as long as it’s intact. If the TV has been disassembled or its casing is broken open, a handling fee will apply because of the potential for release of toxic materials in the sets — the reason why they can’t be placed in landfills.

“I was driving home and saw a TV sitting out on the curb with someone’s garbage,” she said, despite the law banning the sets from landfills.

There are some electronics Cleanways won’t accept, such as stereo speakers and music CDs. A complete list of the various items that can be dropped off at the center for recycling can be found on the nonprofit’s website at westmorelandcleanways.org.

Other videos provide an introduction to and tour of the Cleanways center and its newest service — recycling particular types of foam. The center will accept foam cups, plates, grocery store trays, egg cartons and fast food containers that have been cleaned of food residue. It won’t take foam “peanuts” used as packing in mail orders or the spongy wrap often found around new TVs.

Westmoreland Cleanways is an affiliate of Greensburg-based nonprofit Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, which covered the cost of producing the videos as part of a $20,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The funding also assisted with informational projects by four other affiliates.

“Recycling rules can be confusing, but most people want to do the right thing,” said Shannon Reiter, president of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. “Educating residents about what is recyclable and how to recycle in their communities will reduce contamination and the amount of waste going to the landfills, conserve valuable resources, create jobs and protect oceans and waterways from waste.”

The Westmoreland Cleanways recycling center, located at 355 Pleasant Unity Mutual Road, is open to the public noon to 5 p.m. Mondays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, and 8:30 a.m. to noon the second Saturday of each month. It can be reached at 724-879-4020.