Kick off Earth Day weekend 2023 by e-recycling at the Zoo!
The Cleveland Zoological Society, the nonprofit advancement partner of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and MCPC, a data protection company, are hosting E-Recycling Day on Friday, April 21, 2023.
MCPC has an e-recycling facility on Pearl Road in Old Brooklyn, and Chairman and Founder Mike Trebilcock has been working with the Zoo since 2018.
What items can I bring to be recycled?
MCPC will be accepting quite a number of items, from cell phones to computer keyboards and nearly everything in between. Click here for a full list of items that will be accepted on April 21.
What can I do?
Bring your old electronics to the Zoo for recycling on Friday, April 21.
The Cleveland Zoological Society, the nonprofit advancement partner of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and MCPC, a data protection company, are hosting E-Recycling Day on Friday, April 21, 2022. Guests are encouraged to bring their old electronics to the Zoo’s parking lot where MCPC will have a secure truck that will take the electronics back to their facility for recycling.
E-Recycling Day with MCPC
Friday, April 21
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Zoo's parking lot (at the far back of the Tiger Lot)
Event is rain or shine
MCPC's Go Green! Machine will accept your recyclable items on April 21
What happens to my electronic device when MCPC recycles it?
Recycling unused electronic devices enables us to recover valuable metals and materials including copper, aluminum, titanium, gold, and silver, which can be reclaimed and reused in new electronic devices. E-recycling saves natural resources, reduces pollution, conserves landfill space, and creates jobs, including right here in Cleveland!
E-recycling is largely a process of separating plastics from metals and internal circuitry. First, your electronics will be dismantled, and components separated by type: power cords, plastic and metal housings, circuit boards and chips, LCDs, etc. Then, these components will be processed by our secure, specialized recycling partners so they can be used to manufacture new electronics.
If you recycle a device that holds data (such as a desktop or laptop computer, smartphone, or tablet), we will erase it with software that uses a standard 3-pass data overwrite, or secure SSD erasure process. This permanently destroys your data in compliance with standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Drives and storage devices that fail erasure are shredded at the MCPC Secure Technology Asset Disposition Center in Old Brooklyn.
Help us keep thousands of recyclable electronics out of landfills
How much has been recycled?
This is our third e-recycling event with MCPC.
- In 2021, 26 pallets of electronics were received and 14,500 lbs. of electronics were donated.
- In 2022, 26 pallets of electronics were received and more than 16,000 lbs. of electronics were donated.
To put that in perspective, Willy the elephant weighs 14,000 lbs. Each year, donations helped us recycle more than the weight of an African bull elephant!
Student volunteers from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District helped the recycling day event efforts in 2022