Best Buy helps out with e-waste removal in New Orleans

May 9 -- Electronics retailer Best Buy has removed 100,000 pounds of hurricane-damaged electronics from New Orleans in a cooperative effort with federal, state and local governments that are cleaning up potentially hazardous household debris in southern Louisiana.

Best Buy, a partner in the Environmental Protection Agency´s Plug-In to eCycling Program, removed the material from an Orleans Parish collection site. The Army Corps of Engineers collected the electronics from the streets of the parish and brought them to the collection point. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have coordinated the collection and recycling of 13 million pounds of storm-related e-waste throughout southern Louisiana since September.

The EPA´s Plug-In to eCycling program aims to increase the safe recycling of electronic waste. Best Buy, which has worked with the EPA since the program´s inception three years ago, paid for the removal and environmentally safe recycling of storm-damaged computers, monitors and televisions.

During the past month, Best Buy also delivered $5 million in computer donations to schools damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area and in Mississippi, and teamed up with the EPA to assist in the safe recycling of storm-damaged electronics in both Louisiana and Mississippi.