By Crystal Donaldson

NORMAL – Recent law changes will result in the Town of Normal having only one electronic waste recycling center.

Director of the Ecology Action Center in Normal, Michael Brown, believes these changes are for the better.

The Illinois General Assembly passed the Consumer Electronics Recycling Act (CERA) in 2017.

Brown said previous laws attempted to meet the needs of residential e-waste recycling, but the new CERA law does a better job.

“Looking across the state of Illinois, the economics of it were such that less heavily populated communities… there wasn’t really any e-waste recycling options,” Brown said. “So this new law seeks to correct that.”

Home Sweet Home Ministries and Habitat for Humanity Restore will no longer take electronic waste drop off because of the changes.

Brown said Town of Normal Public Works Garage will continue to collect e-waste and will now act as the default drop-off center. This location is open to all McLean County residents.

“In more southern Illinois communities and in more rural communities, there will now be – probably for the first time in many areas – options for e-waste recycling available.”

Brown said under the previous law quotas for recycling collections were not high enough which caused communities that did have permanent collection points to be left with a high bill when getting rid of the left over waste.

“In some cases, Town of Normal in previous years may have paid as much as $80,000 for e-waste recycling for residents. And that really wasn’t the intent of the original e-waste recycling law,” Brown finished.

Brown said he is optimistic the new law “will be a better fix and better meet the needs of residents across the state.”

Crystal Donaldson can be reached at [email protected].