After a long, hot day of standing in the sun, local volunteers and Ecovery officials were able to collect 7,800 pounds worth of material on Friday.

David Windsor, Ecovery’s manager of environmental, health and safety, said the collection was about average for a community the size of Greenville.

“It’s important because 7,800 pounds of material did not go to a landfill,” Windsor said. “This stuff will stand in landfills for an unknown amount of time. It’s a small spoke in a large wheel, but if you saved one computer from going to a landfill and it gets recycled, then you‘ve done something.”

Items that were recycled on Friday included televisions, computer monitors and keyboards.

One man who stopped in to drop off three computer monitors and a few other small items was James Taylor.

“Instead of letting these items go to the dump, we decided to bring them here,” Taylor said. “We just let (Ecovery) have them.”

After the items have been dropped off, each item is processed through a plant in Loxley, Ala. The CPUs will be taken apart by hand and separated of all components including boards, wiring, metals cases and plastic, Windsor said.

As far as glass, that will be separated from each monitor or television, packaged and sent to a certified recycling business that will dispose of it in a proper manner.

“They’ll remove the phosphorus, mercury and lead and melt the glass to reuse it again,” Windsor said. “Everything else will be processed through our scrap line, which is a large tumbler, and it basically is a washing machine that tumbles everything until its size is reduced.”

Items like aluminum and copper are sold to steel mills that will recycle that material into other items.

For more information on how to recycle electronics, visit EcoveryLLC.com.