Span Arts has launched a new service for businesses and local people to recycle unwanted music media and ‘technotrash’.

Technotrash is a waste stream which includes all the spent supplies and obsolete accessories associated with your computer. This waste includes all those computer-related materials which you no longer need and have stuffed away

in drawers, closets, and boxes in your office, storage room, attic, or in your garage. CD’s, Zip disks, floppy disks, obsolete cell phones, rechargeable batteries, empty printer cartridges, CDRoms, CDRW’s that are no longer needed– this is all technotrash. We all have this stuff, but most of us just don’t know how to properly dispose of it in an environmentally safe way.

As anyone who’s ever tried to break a CD in a fit of rage will know, they’re verging on indestructible, which means left unchecked they’ll sit in landfill sites forever.

However, CDs and the like can be recycled, through the extraction of the polycarbonate and aluminium content for the use in the manufacture of new components using hard plastics and metals. Recycling with Span Arts will keep your electronic waste, some of which contains hazardous material, out of landfills (or your garage). As we move farther into the information age, the volume of obsolete computer equipment and supplies is becoming a serious problem that needs to be dealt with responsibly. Today, over 90% of technotrash is not being recycled. Some is thrown away, but most remains unused sitting on desks or taking up storage space.

Span Arts will keep a stock of music, CDs and vinyl on ‘Rescue Racks’ that you can browse for lost or forgotten albums that can be ‘re owned’ for a small donation.

Span use a network of non-profit organizations to process the material donated. We reuse or resell what we can, and recycle the rest. Inkjet cartridges get remanufactured and, when possible, mobile phones etc are sent to Action Aid for resale or repair. Material that has no further operating life is broken down to its smallest components (metals, plastics, etc.) and used in the manufacturing of new products, all of the material that Span Arts collects is reused or recycled. No hazardous materials or obsolete components go overseas to be processed. Span Arts will be able to find creative second usage for some of the CDs to delay their ultimate disposal, by remaking them as sculptures and lamps. The saleable music and videos will be resold on the premises and online to defray the costs.

This project has been enabled by a Sustainable Pembrokeshire grant via PAVS.