Holiday gifts spark Saskatchewan recycling

The Christmas rush to buy televisions, DVD players and iPods may be a fading memory — but now the rush to recycle old electronics has begun.

Workers at the province's SARCAN recycling centres have been busy this week as people show up with obsolete, broken and surplus TVs, computers, cell phones and other gadgets.

The centres are getting thousands of kilograms of electronics daily, SARCAN director of operations Kevin Acton said.

"From Boxing Day on, we've been getting back a lot of electronics," Acton said. "Saskatoon and Regina we got almost 14,000 pounds [about 6,300 kilograms] of electronics back for recycling in one day."

Last year, SARCAN received more than 2 million kilograms of electronics.

That means some heavy lifting for SARCAN workers, Acton noted.

"It's pretty hard, and some of the televisions are old TVs that are coming in," he said. "It's amazing. Some people still have the old console models and there's one right here ... from the 60s or early 70s. So those ones are heavy."

People can drop off up to 25 pieces of electronics per day at any of the 71 SARCAN recycling centres around the province.