BLACKSBURG -- Lead. Cadmium. Mercury.

These toxic metals lurk in cellphones and fluorescent light bulbs, behind the screen of your computer and in the balancing weights on car wheels.

Year after year, many of these products go into trash bins or landfills or, as in the case of wheel weights, fall onto the roads.

From there the toxic metals can eventually leach into soil and drinking water and cause myriad health problems and environmental damage.

Last year across the country, 130 million computers were discarded, according to the National Safety Council. It's hard to count in tons the amount of electronic waste such as televisions, computers and lamps that goes into the local landfill each year.

But "it's a huge amount," said Tim Myers, director of recycling at the Montgomery Regional Solid Waste Authority.

Nearly every household in the county has at least one television and computer, sometimes more. And more and more people every year move into the county.

While it's been possible for some time for residents to recycle electronic items at the Christiansburg landfill for a fee, most choose the convenience of throwing them in the trash.

But a new community partnership called Sustainable Blacksburg, with help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, hopes to change that habit.

The partnership, led by Blacksburg Public Works Director Kelly Mattingly and town environmental manager Susan Garrison, recently qualified for a $95,000 grant from the EPA.

It is the largest such grant awarded to any applicant in the mid-Atlantic region, which includes Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C., according to EPA spokeswoman Donna Heron.

The grant from EPA's Resource Conservation Challenge program will fund a two-year education and recycling project to make it convenient -- and best of all free -- to recycle electronics in the county.

To kick off the program, Sustainable Blacksburg will sponsor the first Environmental Awareness Week with several events beginning Monday and ending Aug. 26.

The group has attracted 36 community partners, from the YMCA at Virginia Tech and town government to Anderson & Associates engineering firm and the Montgomery County League of Women Voters.

"The interest has just been amazing," Mattingly said.

It works like this: Beginning Tuesday at the formal kickoff ceremony, residents may drop off old electronics at the YMCA center at 1000 N. Main St. in Blacksburg.

If the items can be used, they will be sold through the Y's thrift store and donors can take a tax write-off for the value. Any items that can't be sold will be recycled through the solid waste authority and the fees will be paid by the grant.

The thrift shop already is known in the community for keeping used items out of the landfill, Y Director Gail Billingsley said. But the new program "will be a nice extension" of those efforts.

As part of its participation, the Y will offer a series of Open University classes on environmental issues beginning in the fall, Billingsley said.

The grant will also fund recycling of certain kinds of batteries and a pilot program to do away with lead wheel weights on all town government vehicles, Mattingly said.

The lead weights will be replaced with ones made either of zinc or steel. And, once the town gets that program running smoothly, officials hope to help train local automotive businesses in using the environmentally benign weights.

About 13 percent of lead wheel weights installed on cars eventually fall off onto the roads, possibly contributing to lead pollution, Mattingly said. Excessive lead exposure can cause learning disabilities in children and long-term health problems in adults, according to the EPA.

The grant is part of an ongoing effort by the town to be a better environmental steward, Garrison said.

Garrison administers the town's Environmental Management System, a set of policies and procedures that include reducing storm water, conserving electricity and fuel, recycling and other conservation measures across all departments, from the town garage to town hall offices.