Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Annual e-Cycling event at Sylvania Campus set for May 18

Photos and story by Deborah Crawford

Looking to do some spring cleaning?  Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 18.  PCC Sylvania will host its sixth annual Computer e-Cycling Drive. The event will take place on the Sylvania Campus, in Parking Lot 10, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Unwanted computer equipment (computer towers, laptops, monitors, printers, keyboards, scanners and disks) will be accepted. Total Reclaim and Sylvania faculty, staff and students will evaluate whether items can be used again. If not, they will be completely and responsibly recycled. Throughout the event, students will collect data about donors and donations as part of class research projects.

For the second year, block Styrofoam will also be accepted on site. Total Reclaim will process the collected material at its Portland facility using a “densifier” – a powerful shredder – to reduce its volume. This will be sold to manufacturers of low-grade plastics such as picture frames.

“The densifier significantly shrinks the Styrofoam, so much so that it takes a full 53-foot tractor-trailer load of Styrofoam to produce a box about the size of a standard pallet of densified, reusable plastic material,” said Diane Shingledecker, Computer Applications Systems instructor and organizer of the e-Cycling drive.

For the first time this year, organizers will offer a free hard drive destruction station. People will be able to have their hard drives demolished before they donate them to be recycled. This will eliminate any worry of identity theft or use of other information on the donated hard drives.

The event is open to the general public. Cost is $5 per car load and $10 per pick-up truck/SUV/van load. Cash only and no checks or credit cards.  Television sets will not be accepted.

For more information, contact Shingledecker at (971) 722-4099, or (503) 310-7293 on the day of the event.