County officials participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony in Christopher Tuesday for the county's new electronics recycling center. Pictured from left to right: Patty Fugate with the Soil Conservation District, District Board Member Barbara Tate, Judge-Executive Denny Ray Noble, District Chairman Bobby Brown, Solid Waste Coordinate Rosa Couch, and Katherine Brown. (photo by Cris Ritchie)

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CHRISTOPHER – Residents of Perry County looking to get rid of that old television set or microwave oven now have a new local and environmentally friendly way to do so.

A ribbon cutting ceremony was held at the county’s new electronics recycling center Tuesday beside the county maintenance garage. The building, which is appropriately colored green, is now open to accept nearly any type of electronics item for recycling.

The center’s development was a joint project between the Perry County Soil Conservation District and the fiscal court, and District Chairman Bobby Brown noted there are a wide variety of items from coffee makers to computers that can be accepted at the center.

“We’ll take just about anything that’s got a plug on it,” Brown said.

The center will be open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for drop off of items only. Solid Waste Coordinator Rosa Couch added that only electronics can be accepted at the new facility.

“If they drop off anything else, we can’t accept it,” she explained.

From the new center in Christopher, the items will be transported to a processing facility in Knoxville where a company there will recycle components for future use. Nearly everything will be recyclable, Brown explained, and “very little of it will end up in a landfill.”

The building was constructed with a price tag of $20,000, a little over half of which was covered by a grant obtained by the conservation district, and the remainder covered by the fiscal court. Judge-Executive Denny Ray Noble thanked Brown and the district for their work on the project, and said he feels the expense will be well worth it to the county because this new facility will allow people to recycle items rather than sending them whole to a landfill.

“This is another way of recycling and another step in the right direction,” Noble said. “We started off with metal recycling, then we went to electronics, and I’m sure in the future Perry County will go into other types of recycling.”

The new recycling center will also come in handy this spring during the county’s annual clean-up. On April 12 and 13 officials will begin an electronics drive, while on April 14 and 15 the two-day community cleanup will take place.