Toaster Oven    cuisinart toaster oven   A short time after the publication of my last column, in which I discussed my unwanted toaster oven and my first experience with Freecycle.com (two offers and no takers), I received an e-mail from someone who read the article.
     The e-mail came from a woman who worked at a landfill - yikes - the very fate I was hoping my poor little toaster oven wouldn’t meet.
However, Tana Godshall, the e-mail’s author and weighmaster and recycling center coordinator at the Western Berks Community Landfill and Recycling Center on 455 Poplar Neck Road in Cumru Township, assured me that if I took her advice, my beloved little appliance wouldn’t end up in their landfill. Instead, she encouraged me to drop it off at their recycling center. This, she said, would provide an interesting karmic fate for my toaster oven.
     Theoretically speaking, she explained, my little old toaster oven could have a much better future in store for it than buried beneath tons of garbage in a landfill or continuing to toast bread or melt cheese as it had done for so many years leading up to this point. It could actually one day be used to make something as sophisticated as a plasma television.
Imagine that.
     "From here (a used appliance or piece of electronic equipment) is shipped to the company warehouse where it is either refurbished or dismantled; its various metal, plastic, and glass parts will get processed down for reuse into something new," explained Godshall.

      That was all I needed to hear to convince me. I loaded my toaster oven into the back seat of my car and headed to the landfill’s recycling center, which actually takes a number of materials including alkaline, car/lead acid and rechargeable batteries, aluminum and tin cans, plastics No. 1 and 2, glass bottles and jars, cardboard, paper (all types), newspaper/magazines (you can recycle this column when you finish reading it), scrap metal, tires, electronics, appliances, cell phones, waste vegetable oil, printer/toner cartridges, eyeglasses, good-condition clothing and fluorescent tube lights.
      I was met at the center by Godshall, who explained how the items all are taken to various places to be recycled. For instance, electronics and appliances get taken to an electronic recycling facility in   Lakewood, N.J., tires are taken to Lehigh Cement in Fleetwood and the used clothing gets taken to Goodwill.A twinge of sadness passed over me as I handed over the toaster oven and watched as Godshall placed it on top of an extremely large television set that was also on its way to be recycled (Who knows, maybe that TV will one day become a new toaster oven?).
      But I knew that I was giving it a better life. It was moving up in the world. I almost felt proud, until I realized it was an inanimate object and it would be ridiculous to be proud of an old hunk of metal.
However, I did feel proud of myself. I felt good about the fact that my toaster oven wouldn’t end up in a landfill, at least not on my watch. An extremely interesting tour of the landfill, graciously given to me by site manager Dennis Mohn, made me feel even better about my decision. While they have handling our trash safely down to a science, there’s no hiding the fact that we make a lot of it. A whole lot. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. 
      After that, I was even more glad that my toaster oven found a much better fate.
     It also made me happy to know that I’ve successfully removed one piece of clutter from my garage. It may not be much, but you have to start somewhere.For more information,please visit http://www.bossgoo.com