From televisions and computers to printers and batteries, Grafton residents made room for the new by getting rid of the old yesterday, and they did it responsibly.

“If it has a cord on it, I think we've seen it today,” Recycling Committee Chair Stephanie Collins-Rankin said as she worked at the Electronics Recycling Collection Event at the Grafton Municipal Center.

Collins-Rankin said a steady flow of cars, at least 150 of them, had been coming through all morning with many people bringing old items that they are replacing with new technology.

Such was the case for Grafton resident Cheryl Formato, who said her husband has gotten a new computer. She also brought old televisions, monitors, and VCRs.

Formato said she participated in last month's Styrofoam Recycling Day as well and is trying to be more attentive to when these recycling events are being held so she can plan ahead. The town's use of the Pay As You Throw program, which began in 2009, helped to make her more aware of recycling, she said.

Her other option would have been to throw the electronics out, Formato said, which is “not a good thing to do.”

The “e-waste,” as Kris Murphy, regional sales manager of Metech Recycling in Worcester, called it, will be dismantled and turned into scrap, which will then be re-manufactured. This was Metech's second time participating in Grafton's electronics recycling event, but the company did a school fundraiser in town last year.

Murphy said some pre-preparation is done right at the event, such as cutting off cords and separating accessories. The company will then manually separate the items, a process that the recycling fees help pay for.

 A personal computer, for example, will be taken apart and separated into circuit boards, batteries and hard drives, etc., she explained, and turned into metal scraps. The raw material then gets reused.

According to Metech's website, the electronic devices are separated into “four distinct material streams: precious metals, other metals, plastics, and glass.”

The Web site lists examples of the products the company “de-manufactures” and recycles as including “consumer electronics, telecom equipment, data center equipment, medical equipment, virtually anything with a circuit board.”

Additionally, the website states that “all information storage devices, including hard disks, flash drives, memory, media and documentation are physically destroyed beyond recovery.”

Murphy said the event organizers were pleased with the turnout today, adding that there were people already waiting in the parking lot for them at 8:30a.m. The event started at 9 a.m.Ten minutes before noon, when the event was to come to a close, cars were still lining up.

Murphy also praised the Recycling Committee, stating that the group did its research and due diligence when choosing a company for the event, including visiting the Metech facility.

“Stephanie is a very active recycler and we appreciate that,” she said.

For more information, visit www.metechrecycling.com.