An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

News | Dec. 19, 2018

Storerooms emptied by mass e-waste turn-in event

By Jeff Landenberger DLA Disposition Services

Airmen at Nellis Air Force Base faced a glut of outdated computer equipment that needed to be removed in a responsible way to protect the environment.

The solution they were looking for found them when Margaret Jones, an agency rep from the DLA Disposition Services site at Nellis, organized a week long e-waste mass turn-in event.

According to Air Force Staff Sgt. Tobias Woodard, local units there recently switched from desktop computers to laptops. This led to a lot of excess, and older equipment was set aside in warehouses and storage rooms.

“I have had monitors in my storeroom for three years that don’t work, but we could not just throw them in the trash, obviously,” Woodard said.

Jones’ plan was to make the event go as smooth as possible.

“We scheduled a week and said ‘ok, you got to have all your stuff ready to go by this time,’” Jones said. “Then I visited those people who had all their paper work ready, so that when they showed up here everything would go smoothly. All we really had to do was unload it and put it straight into containers.”

After he finished dropping off his excess property, Woodard said “As long as you do a little bit of paper work it goes pretty smoothly.”

He also said he now has his storerooms back.

Jones is the only DLA Disposition Service employee permanently located at Nellis. To lend a hand, Heath Buswell, the site lead for Nellis and other bases, and Property Disposal Specialist Leah Bailey came up to work the event.

Buswell said that these mass turn-in events help DLA by helping remove the wait times that some customers experience and that some of the working computers were being looked at by schools and may find homes thanks to the Computers For Learning program.

“Margaret Jones over here makes it pretty easy for us,” Woodard said.