Posts Tagged ‘electronics’

Published: September 17,2007

 DALLAS, Texas – Sept. 17 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Techway Services, Inc. (www.techwayservices.com), Techway Service, Inc. of Dallas, Texas and GEEP International of Nevada (www.geepinc.com) have formed a joint venture company called GEEP Texas. The joint venture is part of GEEP International’s plan to create the largest electronics recycling and End-of-Life (EOL) IT services companies in North America.

The joint venture involves technology and asset transfers between the two companies. GEEP International will design, finance and install advanced eScrap processing equipment at the new GEEP Texas headquarters facility in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. This capital investment is valued at over $4,000,000 (USD). In return, Techway Services will share its industry leading data destruction processes and technologies. At the operations level, Techway Services will continue as a stand alone company offering complete IT asset disposal services while processing all eScrap worldwide through GEEP’s ISO certified facilities.

The GEEP Dallas/Ft. Worth plant will be the first of several new GEEP facilities slated to open across North America by the spring of 2008. These new geographically dispersed computer recycling centers, in addition to GEEP’s current North Carolina and Ontario facilities, will greatly reduce logistics costs for current and future clients such as OEM manufacturers, municipalities and Fortune 1000 companies.

About Techway Services
Techway Services, Inc. a nationally recognized provider of end-of-life (EOL) IT services for corporations, government entities, universities, and channel partners. Techway Services provides a full range of EOL services that include reverse logistics, computer remarketing, computer recycling, and electronic data destruction solutions. Techway Services is a certified Woman owned business and is also HUB certified in the state of Texas.

About GEEP
Global Electric Electronic Processing Inc. is the industry leader for eScrap recycling in North America, with state-of-the-art recycling facilities and advanced processing equipment. GEEP facilities are ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 registered and GEEP is committed to achieving a zero landfill objective. GEEP’s clients include telecommunication service providers, manufacturers and electric utility companies in both Canada and the United States.

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Recycler dumps toxic electronics around the world

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 28, 2009

After tracking hazardous waste shipments and dumping around the world, a national environmental group has sounded the alarm about a million pounds of old electronics innocently donated in Pennsylvania.

Basel Action Network contends that the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society and Allegheny County, Pa., should have known that a free electronics recycling program was too good to be true. The environmental group this week issued a report claiming that EarthEcycle — which collected more than 1 million pounds of old electronics through the Humane Society’s recycling campaign in March and April — ships hazardous waste to countries where it will most likely end up in toxic dumping grounds.

» Click here to view article (By KARAMAGI RUJUMBA, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

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Global Electric Electronic Processing (GEEP), headquartered in Barrie, Ontario, was presented with a silver award for Waste Diversion Program Operator at this year’s Ontario Waste Minimization Awards held recently in Toronto. The Recycling Council of Ontario presents the annual award.

GEEP has introduced technology known as the ERP I system, which is in full production at its Barrie facility.

With ERP I, non-disassembled electric and electronic products are shredded by a heavy-duty crusher. Coarse ferrous and nonferrous parts are taken out automatically, while hand-picking stations are used to remove additional valuable fractions, such as motors, …

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-157034845.html

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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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Toxic Materials in Electronic Products

Over 1,000 materials, including chlorinated solvents, brominated flame retardants, PVC, heavy metals, plastics and gases, are used to make electronic products and their components—semiconductor chips, circuit boards, and disk drives.

A CRT monitor can contain between four and eight pounds of lead alone. Big screen TVs contain even more than that. Flat panel TVs and monitors contain less lead, but use mercury lamps. About 40% of the heavy metals, including lead, mercury and cadmium, in landfills come from electronic equipment discards.

These toxicants are released during the production, use and disposal of electronic products, with the greatest impact at end-of-life. Harmful chemicals released from incinerators and leached from landfills contaminate air and groundwater. The burning of plastics at the waste stage releases dioxins and furans, known developmental and reproductive toxins which persist in the environment and concentrate up the food-chain.

CRT’s: What Are the Health Risks?

Lead

The health effects of lead are well known; lead exposure causes brain damage in children and has already been banned from many consumer products.

Mercury

Mercury is toxic in very low doses, and causes brain and kidney damage. It can be passed on through breast milk; just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate 20 acres of a lake, making the fish unfit to eat.

Cadmium

Cadmium accumulates in the human body and poisons the kidneys.

BFR’s

Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) may seriously affect hormonal functions critical for normal development. A recent study of dust on computers in workplaces and homes found BFRs in every sample taken. One group of BFRs, PBDEs, has been found in alarming rates in the breast milk of women in Sweden and the U.S.

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