TOUGHEST JOB, THE

Corporate Report Wisconsin, May 2008 by Hill, John

CRT PROCESSING CORP. IN JANESVILLE IS RECYCLING THE TOUGHEST MATERIALS - ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT.

The 350 million computers, monitors, TVs, cell phones, photocopiers and other electronic equipment that become worn-out or outmoded in the U.S. each year represent a major environmental challenge. Most of the units contain lead, mercury or other toxins. Many of them are dumped in landfills or exported to developing countries.

CRT Processing Corp. of Janesville has a better answer. The company formed by Don Seller and Jim Cornwell five years ago, is one of few firms in North America and the only one in nine Midwestern states that provides complete electronics recycling service, including glass-to-glass recycling for equipment with cathode ray tubes.

CRT Processing now recycles 30 million pounds of electronic equipment annually. Broken equipment is disassembled for CRT glass, ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, precious metals and AVS plastic. Usable units are refurbished for resale by Midwest Electronics Warehouse, an affiliated company, at a store behind the plant. Only 3% of the material ends up as waste. The company now has annual revenues of more than $ 11 million that have doubled every year since 2004, Cornwell said.

But that's only the beginning. Seiler and Cornwell are poised for an ambitious expansion made possible by the sale of their company last summer to Hendricks Holding Co. of Beloit, a firm founded by the late financial giant Ken Hendricks.

CRT Processing started by acquiring Uniwaste Systems of Portsmouth, N.H., and opening a recycling station in Oakdale, a suburb of Minneapolis, last year. It's in the process of adding five or six major recycling centers at strategic locations diroughout the country in the next 18 months.

Cornwell, the company president said: "Our goal in regionalizing the business is to be more cost-effective for our customers. We currendy receive equipment to be processed from customers across the country - California, Texas. We have customers in Canada that ship to us on a weekly basis. They're paying the transportation costs, and those costs are going up."

Seiler, 69, the CEO of the corporation, and Cornwell, 41, brought more than 35 years of recycling experience to the business when they formed their company in 2004. Seiler had taken an early retirement from Bell Telephone in the late 1980s, and had turned his engineering and design talents to developing equipment for recycling fluorescent bulbs.

Cornwell went into recycling businesses right after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a degree in marketing 20 years ago. He's been at it ever since.

RECYCLING BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER

They became friends in the 1990s when Cornwell was considering the purchase of recycling equipment from Seller's firm. In 2004, Seiler decided he wanted to be in a business actually running the equipment he designed and they formed CRT Processing.

"My partner, Don, said you only come across great opportunities once or twice in a lifetime. You have to be willing to take the risk and be able to identify the opportunity," Cornwell said.

Seiler said: "This is a fantastic adventure and exciting enough that I have no short-term plans of really retiring. There's never a day that there's not an opportunity or a challenge." Seiler and his wife are selling their home in Urbandale, near Des Moines, Iowa, and plan to move to the Janesville area. Don's been living in a rented apartment during the workweek since CRT Processing opened.

Seiler loves the challenge of solving a design problem, a skill he first learned tinkering with his father on the Iowa farm where he grew up. He went to work as a lineman for Bell Telephone right out of high school, and honed his engineering abilities during an approximately 30-year career at the phone company.

CRT Processing started in a 40,000-sq.-ft. plant, but moved into the 140,000-square-foot former building of Midland Steel on Janesville's south side in 2006. A major step was bringing online a state-of-the-art automatic glass recycling system, designed by Seller, last summer. Although a visitor to the plant isn't permitted to see beyond a drape that obscures the device for proprietary reasons, you hear the sound of the machinery shearing the clear glass of the screen of the CRT from the funnel, which contains lead. The two types of glass are chopped into pellets called cullet, which is used in making new glass for electronic equipment. Sellers automated system increased the output of glass pellets by 300%, and reduced waste. The company intends to install automatic glass recycling systems at each of the major recycling centers that it is opening.

CRT Processing receives six to 12 semi-truck loads of electronic waste each day. About 60% of the material comes directly from companies and 40% from other recyclers, Cornwell said. Major clients include Target Corp., GE Medical Systems and General Motors. About four or five truckloads of recyclable materials leave its loading docks daily.