Earth Day E-Recycling 2025

Help protect wild gorillas and their habitat by bringing your old electronics to the Zoo on Earth Day, April 22.

The Cleveland Zoological Society, the nonprofit advancement partner of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and MCPC, a data protection company, are hosting Earth Day E-Recycling on Tuesday, April 22, 2025.

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. View the list of accepted materials here.

What can I do?

Bring your old electronics to the Zoo for recycling on Tuesday, April 22.

The Cleveland Zoological Society, the nonprofit advancement partner of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and MCPC, a data protection company, are hosting Earth Day E-Recycling on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. 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.

Earth Day E-Recycling with MCPC
Tuesday, April 22
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 22

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.

How does recycling my electronics help gorillas?

Many small electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and mp3 players contain coltan, a mineral mined where critically endangered gorillas live in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This mining contributes not only to the destruction of gorilla habitat, but also to military and economic conflict. By recycling electronics, these minerals can be diverted from landfills and reused, reducing the demand for unsustainable mining.

Help us keep thousands of recyclable electronics out of landfills

How much has been recycled?

Our annual recycling event with MCPC began in 2021. Since then, E-Recycling with MCPC has resulted in more than 77,500 pounds of electronics donated!

No need to even get out of your car - we've got it covered!