Americans generate almost seven million tons of e-waste each year according to the U.S. Public interest Research Group. McKinley High School students, teachers, and their families participated in the Go-Green Event on Oct. 28 in the front parking lot to encourage the community to donate and help people properly recycle their e-waste.
It is very important to certain teachers at McKinley that this waste is taken care of in the right way. Stacie Maeda was one of the coordinators for the event. Maeda took the initiative to host this event after the CTE department demonstrated a need to recycle e-waste.
“This event cost less to put on than hiring another company, and we wanted to get the McKinley community more involved,” Maeda said.
Jodi Fong, a business teacher, also helped and participated in this event. “We did the Go-Green event to help dispose of our unused and old electronics instead of just dumping them, which you are not supposed to do,” Fong said.
“There was a pretty steady stream of people coming through. There was a lot of e-waste from McKinley High School. I was surprised at how much e-waste came from our school,” Fong said. Around 20 pallets of e-waste were collected, most from MHS staff.
“It was nice to see the public coming to support and dispose of their things the correct way,” Fong said.
“Most of the e-waste was pallets from the school built up over the last 10 years,” Maeda said.
“Every staff member participating contributed to the 19 pallets of e-waste, and maybe 1 pallet of e-waste was from the public community.”
Although there was a lot of e-waste collected, volunteers for the event were not great in numbers.
Jeighna Diaz (c/o 2026) was one of the students who volunteered.
“It was a Key Club thing, and not a lot of people showed up to volunteer,” Diaz said. “My friends and I went to it though, and it was actually pretty fun.”
“The highlight of the event was probably the food they gave us at the end,” Diaz said “It was super fun helping carry everything, though.”
Fong said the amount of volunteers helping with e-waste is small. Around six students, four teachers and their familes helped.
“I was shocked by both the amount of e-waste we had to pack and the small participation by the staff,” Maeda said.
Maeda was happy nonetheless about the outcome of the event and said she feels grateful for the small number of hard working people who came and helped with this event.
“They labored for six hours, three hours over the planned time, to help make sure all of the e-waste at the school was recycled properly,” Maeda said.
There are many places around the island to donate e-waste. Some of these places include E-opala Computer Recycling Center and T and N Computer Recycling Services.
