Background
In order to reduce solid waste, increase recycling and improve the efficiency of solid waste collection, while minimizing financial impacts on our citizens, Sedgwick County has provided several multi-days residential e-waste collection events. Recent events have been at: Sedgwick County West Yard, 4701 S. West St., Wichita, KS. Sedgwick County Environmental Resources has coordinated a total five events in the past: 2009, 2018, 2020, 2022 and most recently 2024. The 2024 e-waste collection event received 418,617 pounds of materials from over 4,075 vehicles.
The first event in 2009, was a one-day event that resulted in 1,144,163 pounds collected. Sixty-four workers unloaded e-waste from 2,620 vehicles. This included 6,915 televisions and 6,783 computer monitors. It took workers 11 days to remove the e-waste from Pavilion II at the Coliseum. The event was a success and helped citizens clean out stored electronics.
Since then, some local businesses began offering recycling of certain electronic items. Citizens were able to take items to them for free recycling. Over time, these businesses narrowed the options for recycling and started to charge for this service. Residents contacted Environmental Resources requesting additional electronic waste recycling events.
Due to these requests and the need to properly recycle electronics, biennial events typically took place in the spring for two weekends (Thursday to Saturday) in a row from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Residents of Sedgwick County were able to bring items such as computers, laptops, printers, televisions, cellphones, batteries, tablets, network devices (routers, modems, etc.), VCRs, DVD players, video games, scanners, fax machines, copiers, microwaves and more. Sedgwick County Environmental Resources made it a point to select a vendor that was not only environmentally conscious but also ensured safe disposal of hard drives.
