Toronto will hold its first Inorganic market this Sunday, February 24th in the Bloor West Village district, to help prevent waste electronics ending up on the landfill, and to help prevent scenes such as in the above photo.
Rather than selling goods, the Inorganic market allows visitors to drop off used or broken electronic items for free recycling, including laptops, MP3 players and cell phones. Working components will be reused whereas non-working items will be 100% recycled according to the iRecycle Code of Standards.
Last year, non-profit Social Entrepreneur Launch Factor (SELF) and technical partner iRecycle Computers held the first event of this kind where members of the community dropped off electronic waste for recycling, preventing 5000 pounds of waste from going into the landfill. This year’s Inorganic Market event is part of a wider community-based project which will provide more opportunities for consumer electronic waste recycling in Toronto. “The Inorganic Market is an opportunity for individuals to make a change at the community level and be positively engaged with the problem of e-waste,” said SELF Director Sean Coutts. “People are the solution in the Inorganic Market.”
A portion of the revenue from the Inorganic Market will be put back into the community, helping offset any user fee increases that may be introduced by the City of Toronto affecting ice rinks, swimming pools and other recreation facilities. Community members will vote to determine which facilities will receive the funds.
Cooler Solutions, a Toronto-based product design and research company, is working with SELF to develop a solution to the ever-growing problem of e-waste in the form of a community recycling container. Currently only 12% of electronic waste is recycled. At the Inorganic Market, attendees will have an opportunity to view potential designs for the e-waste container and give their input on the concepts by voting for their favourite.
While the Inorganic market is only in Toronto at the moment, this is a concept that could easily be taken up by communities across north America that have inadequate electronic recycling facilities, and could help transform the way people deal with waste electronics.
