Posts Tagged ‘e-waste’

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The News and Observer

http://www.newsobserver.com/

By Wade Rawlins, Staff Writer
Published: Sep 21, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Sep 21, 2006 05:34 AM

Shredder holds future for recycling

A Bobcat tractor scooped a load of computers, office telephones and keyboards off a factory floor at Research Triangle Park and dumped them onto a conveyor belt.

Up they inched into a 22-foot-tall industrial shredder, where a huge chain with links bigger than basketballs smashed the electronics into shards of metal and plastic about four inches long. A second process reduced the shards to chips the size of fine gravel.

With the wave of his hand, Johnnie Cox, operations manager at Global Electric Electronic Processing Inc., initiated a new era in electronic recycling in the Triangle.

The company is part of a new breed of sophisticated scrap dealers that specialize in recycling electronic components and ensuring that sensitive information doesn’t end up in someone else’s hands. Hard drives hold that stuff forever, so when computers wear out, businesses such as banks and medical offices can’t simply junk the machines.

Now they can shred them.

GEEP, part of Barrie Metals Group based in Ontario, Canada, has invested about $4 million in the shredder and hammer mill. The investment will greatly increase the amount of electronics GEEP can recycle to more than 24 tons a day, and it plans to invest in converting plastic into diesel fuel.

GEEP charges companies between 25 and 35 cents per pound for smashing computers to splinters, said Dan Roe, general manager of GEEP.

With the new machinery and greater processing capacity, the company plans to start accepting electronics from the public in coming months and to compete for local government contracts for electronics recycling.

“The GEEP investment is quite a remarkable thing for North Carolina,” said Scott Mouw, state recycling coordinator. “Shredders of this size and magnitude are not widespread in the U.S. For us to get one here is quite a coup.”

America’s love affair with electronics has created mountains of e-waste as new and better gadgets replace older models. The obsolete computers, fax machines and televisions pose new challenges to keep them out of landfills, where they can leak lead, cadmium, mercury and other harmful metals.

“People are realizing we don’t need to stick that stuff in the ground for our grandchildren to worry about,” Roe said. “In the next five years, electronics recycling will be one of the fastest-growing industries in the country. Anybody you talk to has a computer in the attic they don’t know what to do with.”

The recycling should help reduce the volume of e-waste going into landfills, and in time provide a new outlet to the public to dispose of computers.

Triangle residents tossed out more than 1.3 million pounds of electronics last year, county landfill collection records show. Much of that material was recycled in Wake, Durham and Orange counties, which pay recycling companies to haul off the materials. But most counties in the state do not have permanent electronics recycling programs.

Nationally, about 2.5 million tons of consumer electronics are thrown out a year, and only about 10 percent of that gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency estimates that nearly 250 million personal computers will become obsolete in the next 5 years.

And that’s just computers. Add in 128 million cell phones that are retired a year, along with untold millions of other electronic gizmos, and the mountain of e-trash grows.

About 400 companies in the United States recycle electronics, according to the trade group International Association of Electronics Recyclers. Many computer and cell phone manufacturers also operate recycling programs.

Business is evolving

Since coming to the Triangle in 2002, GEEP’s main income has been handling discarded electronics from high-tech companies in Research Triangle Park. Heaps of disassembled computers and plastic computer cases cover the plant floor.

The plant recycles electronics from about 30 companies, Roe said, with some electronics shipped from other states.

Some of the businesses, such as banks and health services companies, have sensitive financial information on computers, and they want the electronics shredded as though they were paper files.

Until now, 20 workers at GEEP disassembled computers and other electronics by hand, to recover materials such as steel, copper and aluminum. They processed about 3,500 pounds a day — just a fraction of what the shredder will do. Then the electronics were shipped to the company’s Canadian headquarters for disassembly and shredding.

With the new machinery, the company has added 12 employees.

The recovered steel, copper, aluminum and glass are resold as raw materials to manufacturers to use in making new products.

Mixed plastics are among the most difficult materials to resell. Within a year, GEEP plans to start installing a facility to convert recycled mixed plastic into diesel fuel. Roe expects the company will increase to about 100 employees when it starts producing diesel fuel.

“We really should have an impact,” Roe said.

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GEEP Electric and Electronic Waste Recycling Facility

The Global Electric and Electronic Processing Inc. (GEEP) recycling facility is the newest addition to the Edmonton Waste Management Centre.

Using cutting edge processes and equipment, the 45,000 square foot facility is expected to process 30,000 tonnes per year of old computers, televisions, and a wide range of electrical and electronic waste materials for recycling.

Processes and equipment used at the state of the art facility include:

• Centrifugal Separation
• Plastics Shredder
• CRT Processing
• Chain Shredder
• De-Reeler
• Baler

The facility is built and operated by GEEP Alberta Inc – a subsidiary of GEEP Inc, an international e-waste recycler based in Barrie Ontario. It is the first e-waste recycling facility to be built by GEEP Inc in western Canada.

GEEP is a registered processor under Alberta’s electronics program which is administered by Alberta Recycling Management Authority.

What can be recycled at GEEP?:

• small kitchen appliances
• audio and video equipment and televisions
• personal care appliances (hair dryers, shavers, etc. )
• other electrical household tools (vacuums, irons, floor polishers)
• electrical power tools
• telecommunications equipment – telephones, cell phones
• computer and home office equipment
• computer components
• photocopiers, fax machines and similar office electronics
• industrial electrical tools
• specialty equipment containing electrical motors, switches and other components with material value

A worker disassembles a computer monitor at the new GEEP electronic and electric waste recycling facility.

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By Wade Rawlins, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Apr. 22–Triangle residents tossed out more than 1.3 million pounds of computers, televisions and stereos last year, most of them likely replaced by newer models that could also become attic clutter one day.

As people celebrate Earth Day today, there is green lining to this waste stream. Many of those junked circuit boards, leaded-glass monitor screens and video recorders didn’t end up in local landfills. They went to companies that recycle the electronics for steel, copper, glass and plastic.

But that is not consistently true across the state.

The age of electronics — in which new models replace old models in months rather than decades — produces lots of scrap known as e-waste and new challenges for handling the castoffs.

Only about a dozen counties and cities in North Carolina have permanent electronics recycling programs. They include Wake and Orange counties and the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Cary. Another dozen counties have collection events once or twice a year when residents can drop off their old TVs and computers. In most places, obsolete computers just go into attics or, worse, landfills. Dumped with other rubbish, they can leak lead, cadmium, mercury and other harmful metals.

“The collection around the state is spotty,” said Scott Mouw, the state’s recycling coordinator. “The majority of households in North Carolina have no local program to use. It’s not like those people don’t have TVs and computers. It’s just that they don’t have access to a service that would have them recycled.”

Orange County, which began a full-time program in 2003, has one of the nation’s highest electronics recycling rates. It’s paid for with a $27 annual fee charged to owners of homes and businesses.

Wake County has had a collection program since 2002, and each year the quantity of materials collected increases. Last year, the county collected 826,000 pounds of electronics, including 208,000 pounds of monitors and 156,000 pounds of televisions.

On Thursday, a trickle of people showed up at the North Wake landfill’s recycling center; one fellow dumped a pickup truck load of computers monitors.

Annette McMillan and a co-worker at the U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped off five old computers, a printer and fax machine at the North Wake Landfill electronics recycling site. McMillan said they brought the equipment there because they knew it would be recycled.

“It doesn’t do anyone any service when that is taken to the landfill,” McMillan said. “It doesn’t help the environment.”

Ralph Poyo, a faith formation director at a Catholic church, dropped off his father’s old computer and printer. He was happy to learn the computer would be recycled after “sitting around for six months.”

The electronics are loaded onto pallets and placed in truck trailers. The county pays Envirocycle, a Pennsylvania company, about $200,000 a year to take the electronics for recycling, said Craig Wittig, who oversees the county’s program. A $20 solid waste fee added on county property tax bills pays for the program.

“On average we ship out two full semi trailers a month,” Wittig said. “Prior to us having a collection program, that material would have probably gone to a landfill. We anticipate that that volume will continue to increase.”

So does Global Electric Electronics Processing, a Canadian company that opened a plant in Durham in 2002 to recycle electronics.

The company has 25 employees who disassemble electronics into components, such as steel, copper, aluminum and other parts. The pieces are sold to manufacturers to be used in new computers and other products.

“Think about all the material that goes into these electronics,” said Dan Roe, GEEP general manager. “It’s an energy waste when you take all that stuff and discard it.”

GEEP recently invested in a large shredder to allow it to handle more electronics. Roe predicted the company would increase the volume of electronics it handles from 2,000 tons to 10,000 tons a year when the shredder is running later this year.

Many counties are reluctant to start electronics recycling programs because of the expense, said Mouw, the state recycling coordinator.

State proposal

A bill introduced by Sen. Janet Cowell of Wake County would ban electronics from landfills and add $5 to the price of computers and televisions to pay for county recycling programs across the state. A similar program exists for old appliances such as refrigerators and stoves.

Environmental groups say the bill would help counties afford recycling programs and would provide materials for recyclers.

“The biggest problem in e-recycling is a lack of materials for businesses that process electronics,” said Elizabeth Self, government affairs coordinator for the N.C. chapter of the Sierra Club. “If you put a method where we get materials to those companies, that would really spike the market.”

The bill has been sidelined in a Senate committee, but Cowell hopes to at least get a hearing on the bill in the coming session.

“We think a statewide funding source is the key to making that happen,” Mouw said. “Then every North Carolinian would have a permanent drop-off site.”

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

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Source: The News & Observer

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