CENTREVILLE — A robust turnout at the tire drop-off station fueled the success of Saturday’s household hazardous waste collection and electronics recycling event at the St. Joseph County Fairgrounds.

Organized by the St. Joseph County Solid Waste Committee, the four-hour collection yielded more than 1,100 tires, approximately 8,000 pounds of household hazardous waste and 24,000 pounds of electronics.

For the sake of comparison, the fall event last year netted 800 tires and 6,000 pounds of household hazardous waste, but 35,000 pounds of electronics.

Committee secretary Pat Kulikowski said the fall collection generally lags behind the spring event in terms of volume. Saturday, she said, was no exception, but it still had strong numbers compared to fall 2022.

“You never know from one collection to the next what to expect in terms of numbers, but this was a considerable volume of tires today,” Kulikowski said. “We always appreciate when people are willing to hold on to them for a few months and bring the tires here so they can be properly handled instead of left in a ditch somewhere.”

Jones residents Emily and Elizabeth Harmon said the collection was exactly what they needed in order to dispose of a few dozen tires left at their grandmother’s property, near Three Rivers.

“My mom saw this on Facebook so we knew this would be a perfect time to start getting some of the tires cleaned up,” Emily said, her sister nodding in confirmation. “My uncle passed away so we wanted to help grandma get things cleaned up around her property.”

Like the Harmons, other at the tire drop-off station had accumulated an odd assortment of old tires that needed a proper disposal.

For example, Tim Boylan, a Flowerfield Township resident, said he collects tires in order to retrieve aluminum rims for scrap metal. Sturgis resident Lawrence Smith said he has accumulated tires willy-nilly through the years and saw Saturday’s collection posted on the county’s website.

As it has for several years, Cobalt Holdings provided the tire drop-off option. The Sturgis-based company shreds old tires and its product is used in numerous ways, including landscaping and playground ground cover.

Company representatives Misty Cloud and Bob Knowlton were aided by a pair of trustees from the St. Joseph County Jail to help with the drop-off process.

Cloud said the first person to stop at the station Saturday was a woman who had collected tires scattered alongside the road over the past six months.

“She knew this event was done twice a year so she just hung on to them until now,” Cloud said. “This (collection) has been going on long enough now that most people seem to anticipate it and plan for it.”

Green Earth Recycling of St. Joseph had a crew of nearly a dozen employees on hand to accept the hundreds of TVs, computers and an assortment of other electronics.

Jeff Bodtke, Green Earth’s director of operations, said the company is a middleman. Its job is to collect electronics and hold them until companies that do the actual disassembly send a truck to their warehouse.

“The recycler tears down the TVs and they try to recycle 100 percent of every item,” he said. “It’s really impressive what they can do.”

Bodtke called St. Joseph County’s twice-a-year collections probably the third largest of the events at which they are attending. Calhoun County, he said, pulls items from Jackson County as well, making it their largest collection, typically.

Kulikowski was unable to secure collection data from a Battle Creek-based company that collected latex paint and a separate operation collecting paper and cardboard.

St. Joseph County Solid Waste Committee will announce the date of the April 2023 collection after the new year.