This year’s edition of the campaign called „Get rid of unnecessary kilowatts”, held in Warsaw and the surrounding areas from May 27 to June 14 in 97 commercial buildings allowed collecting almost 27 tons of e-waste. The campaign covered mainly office buildings, but there were also a few buildings of other kind. The result achieved turned out to be almost threefold higher than a year before. Ten companies operating on the commercial real-estates sector participated in the campaign: BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland, Capital Park Group, Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield, Golden Star Estate, Golub GetHouse, Knight Frank, JLL, NAI Estate Fellows and Platan Group.

In accordance with the idea of the campaign, which has been organised annually since 2012, the income from the utilisation of collected items and retrieved raw materials is assigned for charity. This year’s edition was held by the EKON „Disabled for the Environment” Association, which was also the beneficiary of this year’s campaign. The funds generated on the sale of plastic and recyclable materials will be assigned for the statutory activities of the organisation, namely social and vocational rehabilitation of the disabled. The Association estimates that income generated from the collected e-waste will amount to approximately PLN 30 thousand.

„The opportunity to co-operate with you was a great challenge for us, for the reason of the territorial reach of the campaign, but we were happy to undertake such challenge, in order to expand our experience and vocational competence of our employees. The EKON Association is a non-profit organisation, which creates jobs for the persons with disabilities who may suffer from social exclusion, including for persons with mental illnesses. We are happy that we have stood up to the challenge and additionally we have obtained financial aid. The funds generated during the waste collection will help us continue the accomplishment of our statutory tasks, therefore we would like to express our gratitude for your trust and the offered possibility to work hand in hand in this campaign.” – Jacek Czuryło, the co-ordinator of the e-waste collection on the part of EKON Association, says.

„We are happy that once again we teamed up within the real-estate sector for such a good cause. This time we have managed to expand the reach of our campaign by other buildings, which number increased to 100. Along with the EKON Association, which organised the collection in a very professional and efficient manner, we have managed to remove from the buildings almost 27 tons of e-waste, which is going to be recycled. It is our contribution – as a real-estate sector – to the practical accomplishment of the “less waste” idea. The e-waste collection has always been and remains a very important campaign for us, because we merge the education of the tenants and their staff in the aspect of environment – friendly attitude with the promotion of helping others.” – Izabela Miazgowska, Director of the Real-estate Management Department at Knight Frank, says.

This year, the campaign has been carried out in a new formula – #ElectroTrashChallenge, which refers to the popular social media campaign #TrashChallenge”. The EKON Association gathered the data about the quantity of e-waste in the individual buildings, and thanks to such information, we have managed to indicate for the first time the winner, namely a building that has contributed with the highest quantity of waste for recycling. The leader of the #ElectroTrashChallenge was Rondo 1 office building. A round of applause for the tenants of the building, who took part in our campaign. 

The „Get rid of unnecessary kilowatts” campaign is related to the celebration of the International Earth Day. Thanks to this initiative, the employees of the buildings in the Warsaw area may dispose in the assigned places of unnecessary electric equipment, such as computers, TV sets, telephone sets, batteries, audio equipment or small size electric household appliances. The idea of the campaign is to educate and promote the recycling of e-waste.