The distant future: an electronics recycler ponders which factors will shape the future of this emerging recycling segment

Recycling Today, Oct, 2004 by Thomas V. Hogye

I was sitting at home with a deep, penetrating look on my face, apparently much the same look as when I am dissecting the latest issue of VeloNews or Bicycling Magazine. Seeming intensely focused and preparing for my next ride or equipment purchase, my wife asked me, "What are you thinking about? What are you reading?"

I looked up at her and said serenely. "Oh, I was just thinking about work."

As she looked down at what I was reading, she smirked, "Oh, I thought that was a bicycling magazine."

Instead, I was finishing my latest issue of Recycling Today.

DEFINING TERMS. I was thinking about my side of the recycling world--electronics recycling--and how to improve the awareness of what we do; wondering really how much different it was to the recycling of aluminum cans, bottles, scrap iron or tires. Did these guys have the same problems with integrity and differences in specific definitions as we did? Were there the same issues with export? Are there better and truer recyclers of cans and bottles than one thinks? Is there corruption and deception? I really don't know.

Is the definition "recycler," let's say, of aluminum cans, satisfied and complete if it means a person who retrieves cans out of the trash so he can obtain his next meal? Or does it mean an aluminum smelter specializing in the melting of materials for the sole purpose of taking the can and making it into a metal that can be formed into a can again?

What does it mean to be an "electronics recycler?" If people in the solid waste business who recycle are really "in recycling," then what is someone who is in the e-scrap or e-waste business? Well, we are "in recycling" too! So, there is something we have in common, but from there business begins to get cloudy.

Just what is an "electronics recycler?" If you see an "e-" in front of a word, like recycling, chances are, this is the sign of an electronics recycler. But is the recycling process behind the sign the type of recycling you think is happening? Remember what happens when one "assumes" something.

Do you truly know what happens with electronics recycling? Do you care? You should have an answer to all of these questions and you probably do. It could be well educated and informed or not. However, I dare say that at some "e-recyclers," while the sign on the door looks good, what really happens to the equipment is a far cry from what is happening to the aluminum can. You may not know exactly what happens with an aluminum can, but suffice it to say it is actually getting recycled.

Perhaps with respect to an aluminum can, this lack of knowledge does not necessarily mean there is a sordid untold story. Most aluminum cans (we'll stick with aluminum cans for simplicity, but this could mean any metal, paper or plastic group that is less than 1 percent contaminated) are worth money and easily recycled from a collection point to a smelting destination, either domestically or outside the United States, without much damage to the environment.

Okay, let's then be satisfied that with respect to aluminum, sound recycling is truly happening. One can safely argue the landfill is filling more slowly and the amount of aluminum being recycled is preventing unnecessary mining of ores for a similar purpose. In general, this is a very good thing.

But is that what is happening on the e-recycling front? What is really happening behind the sign on the door--or for that matter, the compelling Web site, pamphlet and business card you have in your hand? Hopefully, the answer is, "A lot."

BREAK DOWN. Let's discuss three obsolete items for the sake of simplicity--a computer (CPU), a monitor (CRT device) and a printer. These three devices contain the complex mixture of materials involved in electronics recycling. The materials contained in a stream of such devices by weight are:

* Iron

* Clean Glass (silica)

* Leaded Glass

* Plastics (several different polymers most of them containing Brominated Flame Retardants)

* Copper

* Tin

* Lead

* Fiberglass

* Gold

* Silver

* Mercury

* Platinum

* Palladium

* Zinc

* Stainless Steel

* Cadmium

* Lithium

* Arsenic, Bismuth, Beryllium, Carbon, Synthetic lubricants and other interesting elements and compounds.

Although some of these materials have value, no one is going to pull a monitor, a CPU or a printer from a garbage can to collect enough money for a meal. Granted they are probably broken, dirty and not working. Or are they? Let us take this a bit further.

If the items worked, or were repairable, a person might quit recycling aluminum cans because the value per piece is much greater with electronics. And he can't collect even close to that much weight to get the same value hack in aluminum without first going very hungry. Why he might even get two meals or a really good one for the value of the electronics he can recover--even if they do not work. Thus the immediate interest in e-recycling by some business owners.

But where does it go?

Aluminum cans go to an aluminum collector who, generally at some point, sells them to a smelter who makes aluminum ingots, billets or sows. The recyclers almost always, if not always, get paid for their efforts. And with aluminum prices where they are today, it can be a modest return.