Computer & Electronic Recycling – for Bergen County residents and businesses

The BCUA operates a NJDEP approved Computer and Electronics Recycling Depot for all Bergen County residents. All types of computer and electronic equipment are collected, by appointment only, for recycling. The Computer and Electronics Recycling Depot is open Monday through Friday between the hours of 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Contact the BCUA Environmental Programs Hotline at (201) 807-5825 to schedule an appointment or for more information.

In addition, the BCUA conducts computer and electronic collection events during the year throughout the county.  Click here for a calender of events.

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In addition to the BCUA program, the following computer recycling programs are also available for Bergen County residents:

MRM Electronics Recycling Program (Click here for more information.)

Goodwill RECONNECT Electronics Recycling Program (Click here for more information)

STAPLES Computer Recycling (click here for more information)
Office Depot, Inc. Computer Recycling (click here for more information)

Best Buy Electronics Recycling (Click here for more information)      ____________________________________________________________________

For Businesses

The Computer and Electronics Recycling Depot accepts equipment from businesses for a nominal fee. Payment must be made by check only and materials must be received by appointment only. Contact the BCUA Environmental Programs Hotline at (201) 807-5825 for complete details. Click here for fees and additional program information.

Acceptable Materials

• Monitors, CPU’s, printers, keyboards, faxes, copiers, laptops, and components such as hard drives, circuit boards, speakers, modems, motherboards, and power supplies.
• Television sets and VCR’s
• Stereo equipment
• Cellular phones

Location & Hours

Bergen County Utilities Authority
Foot of Empire Boulevard
Moonachie, NJ

Collection hours are 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. Monday through Friday, except holidays.

Information from the BCUA website

BCUA Household Hazardous Waste Recycling- next collection date March 10th

The BCUA operates a Household Hazardous Waste Management and Disposal Program for all of Bergen County. Collection programs are held in Moonachie, Paramus and Mahwah from May through October. Household Hazardous Waste is defined as any municipal solid waste, generated by a private residence in a community, that is either a listed hazardous waste, or exhibits certain hazardous characteristics. These characteristics are defined by state regulation, and are based upon the ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, and toxicity of the material.

From residents, the BCUA will accept items such as paints, automotive products, pesticides, aerosols, flammable materials, etc. that are used around your home on a daily basis Placing these items in your trashcan is not an environmentally sound way to dispose of them. Using them up completely is the preferred alternative. To help our environment, more and more communities are asking citizens – on a voluntary basis – to take a few extra steps in the handling and disposal of these hazardous waste items. There is no charge for Bergen County residents to dispose of household hazardous waste material at this program.

The BCUA urges you to participate in this program, which offers a safe alternative for disposal of these materials and helps us create a cleaner and healthier environment in our communities.
If you are not able to wait until the next collection date and want to find out about private contractors to remove HHW or if you need more information about what can be brought to the collections, please use the links below to the BCUA website and publications.

Click here for additional information.

http://www.bcua.org/files/hhw%202012%20flyer.pdf

 
2012 BCUA Household Hazardous Waste Collection Event Dates

Bergen County Utilities Authority, Foot of Empire Blvd., Moonachie

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Saturday, July 21, 2012

 

Bergen County Campgaw Mountain Reservation, 200 Campgaw Rd., Mahwah

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Saturday, November 17, 2012

 

Bergen Community College, 400 Paramus Rd., Paramus

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Sunday, October 14, 2012

 

HHW event hours are 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM, rain or shine

(information from the BCUA website)

…a beautiful day in the HP Parks

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Today, Sunday Jan 29th, was a sunny and warm (high 46’) winter day in Harrington Park. Many residents were out walking, running, and biking on the streets. Several families were at Highland Field enjoying the playground and walking path. Harrington Park has several town parks, all under the jurisdiction of the Recreation Commission. Green Team members will be posting detailed descriptions and photos of the parks in this blog over the next months; here are some photos from today…
George Street Park has a field that is flooded in the winter and used for ice skating. Today, the ducks were swimming there and ignoring the hockey goal.
Pondside Park has a track with fitness stations- and a nice swinging bench seat to sit and enjoy the view.
Highland Field has a walking path through the woods, a large playground, ball fields , and “the Hut”.
Don Horsey Park features a beautiful gazebo.

HP roads update: Let it snow!

According to Mark Kiernan, head of the Harrington Park DPW, the piles of downed trees and branches from the October storm have been chipped and the roadways are now clear. Mark estimates that ~ 1/3 of households put Christmas trees at the curb, so ~ 500-600 Christmas trees have also been chipped in the last 2-3 weeks! The DPW also finished cleaning up the damaged trees from HP Parks this week.

Did you notice the striped roadways around town (and surrounding towns and interstates) today? Northern NJ is anticipating its first winter storm and road safety is a top priority. This winter, the DPW is using a brine solution on the roadways in advance of an anticipated storm, to prevent the formation or development of bonded snow and ice on the road surfaces. This anti-icing is proactive and allows for easier plowing and snow removal. De-icing with rock salt will also be done as needed, depending on snowfall rate and total accumulation, as well as on the use and grade (elevation) of the road. The salt–brine used for the anti-icing is a “eutectic solution with 23% salt, by weight”. This solution is made in a large tank in Closter, transferred to a truck based tank, and then piped through 9 nozzles onto the roads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Interested in learning more?

Road salts are used mitigate ice and snow conditions on roads and to provide safer road conditions. However, the heavy use of road salts can lead to damage to vegetation, as is most obvious with roadside vegetation damaged by salt splash. They have also been associated with damage to organisms in soil, to birds and to other wildlife. Almost all chloride ions from road salts eventually find their way into waterways, whether by direct runoff into surface water or by moving through the soil and groundwater. In surface water, road salts can harm freshwater plants, fish and other organisms that are not adapted to living in saline waters.
(From a FAQ- Environment Canada- Road Salt)

The following information is from the New Jersey Water Supply Authority Website (http://www.raritanbasin.org/):
In New Jersey, the demand for ice-free roadways and sidewalks has led to an increase in the use of deicing salts. Storm runoff containing road salts used in deicing operations has become a source of contamination of surface and subsurface water bodies and water ways which provide clean water for human consumption. The impact of salt runoff on the environment, and high corrosion rates in highway structures and vehicles have been identified as major issues of concern.
The two most commonly applied deicing salts are sodium chloride and calcium chloride. Although calcium chloride is more effective at melting ice, sodium chloride (rock salt) is used most widely because it is relatively inexpensive and is easier to handle. To improve traction, de-icing salts are usually mixed with abrasives. These abrasives, which include sand, cinders, gravel, and sawdust, can accumulate along roadways and cause drainage problems.
The adverse environmental implications arising from improper use of salt and the proposed regulatory requirements have made many state departments of transportation (DOTs) to take a proactive approach towards controlling storm water runoff containing salt.

Read about Sensible Salting and minimizing the impact on the environment on the Salt Institute/Safe Winter Roads site:

http://www.safewinterroads.org

State of the Climate… no snow?

It has been a very balmy and relatively dry winter in Harrington Park so far. There have been some very cold days (and the local wetland waters have frozen and thawed a few times), we have had rain and brief bursts of hail, but the only snowfall took place back in October!

I was curious to find more information as to how this weather compares to the norm and searched on the internet for the average temperatures in NJ for December and January. What I found was …not the State of the Union (address to be given next week) but the State of the Climate—an official posting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center!

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

The State of the Climate Report is a collection of monthly summaries recapping climate-related occurrences on both a global and national scale. This is a fascinating site and allows you to plot (and see in a graph form or on a map) all sorts of weather and climate data. The Annual Climate Report for 2011 will be released by NOAA on January 19th (later today).

In my browsing on this site I learned that:

(1) During December 2011 the eastern third of the nation experienced above average temperatures; northern NJ had above average temperatures in November and December and above normal precipitation in December.

(2) New Jersey made the record books for 2011 for annual records broken or tied for 2011 (compiled from the National Weather Service) for
• the Warmest Year on Record (Trenton, NJ- 56.6 ‘F)
• and the Wettest Year on Record (Newark, NJ 69.91” precipitation)

(3) Rutgers University has a Global Snow Monitoring lab (who knew?…another cool site, supported by NASA and NOAA) On this site you can look at maps with current and historical snow cover.http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover .

(4) and I found the link to http://weather.gov/ that has the shows the current national forecast (and an amazing multicolored map).

However, I finally found the information of actual recent temperatures c/w last year on my PSEG bill! These numbers are from the Energy Use Comparison section:
2010-2011     2011-2012
Jan      33                    36
Dec      47                    51
Nov     54                    57

Happy browsing for weather and climate information!
Submitted by MAS

Volunteers wanted for Bird Count

The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a long-standing program of the National Audubon Society, with over 100 years of citizen science involvement. It is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across the US, Canada and many countries in the Western Hemisphere, go out over a 24 hour period to count birds.

The first CBC was done on Christmas Day of 1900 as an alternative activity to an event called the “side hunt” where people chose sides, then went out and shot as many birds as they could. This will be the 112th annual count.
Count volunteers follow specified routes through a designated 15-mile (24-km) diameter circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. It’s not just a species tally—all birds are counted all day, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day. If observers live within a CBC circle, they may arrange in advance to count the birds at their feeders and submit those data to their compiler. All individual CBC’s are conducted in the period from December 14 to January 5 (inclusive dates) each season, and each count is conducted in one calendar day.
The Hackensack/Ridgewood count circle covers Bergen County’s Hudson River towns from Alpine south to the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the NJ Turnpike, and west to Paterson. The count day is December 17th. As per the Audobon site, there are a dozen leaders covering portions of this circle (the closest to HP). If interested to volunteer, please contact David Hall (973-226-7825) or david.hall@einstein.yu.edu and you may also wish to look at the website for Bergen County Audubon Society (click on field trips).
According to David Hall, as reported in the Bergen Record, the count numbers have shown definite patterns over the years; southern birds extend their winter range north into New Jersey and northern birds no longer extend as far south as the Garden State. A bald eagle sighting would have been rare a decade ago, but now these are commonly seen. (He also mentions that the wild turkey population is doing well!).
Please enjoy these photos of bald eagles taken in HP last year by EC and Green Team member Cindy Kennedy.

Another option is the 15th annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) that will be held February 17-20, 2012. The GBBC is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where birds are across the U.S. and Canada. Anyone can take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, from novice bird watchers to experts. Participants count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the event and report their sightings online. Each checklist submitted by these citizen scientists helps researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society learn more about how birds are doing – and how to protect them and the environment we share. Last year, participants turned in more than 92,000 checklists online, creating the continent’s largest instantaneous snapshot of bird populations ever recorded. Visit the official website at www.birdcount.org for more information.
Please enjoy these photos of bald eagles taken in HP last year by EC and Green Team member Cindy Kennedy.

(Information for this posting is from the Audubon web site FAQ

http://birds.audubon.org/get-involved-christmas-bird-count

and from the Dec 9th Envirowatch article by Bergen Record Staff Writer James M O’Neill)

All creatures great and small!

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A large number of wild animals and birds live in the woods and watersheds surrounding Harrington Park and many of them visit or make their homes in our yards. White-tailed deer are seen frequently. Bird feeders attract various birds, as grey squirrels, and eastern chipmunks, as well as larger animals and birds that prey on them.
These photos of creatures great and small were shared by an Eastbrook resident whose property borders the woods leading to the Hackensack River. All the photographs were taken in her yard in the past year and a half. Many animals and birds visit her three backyard birdfeeders; other animals are just “passing through”. Pictured: White tailed deer, red fox, Eastern Coyote and wild turkeys.

“What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.” —Seattle, Chief of Duwamish, Suquamish and Allied Tribes, 1854 (posted on the Flat Rock Brook nature center website)

For more information about northern NJ wildlife, please look at this website: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/chklists.htm
Or visit a local nature center and speak with a naturalist.
The closest nature center to HP is the Closter Nature Center a:t 145 Ruckman Road, Closter NJ 201-750-2778.

http://www.closternaturecenter.org/website/index.html