Brent indicated that it’s too easy to simply label yourself as an e-waste recycler. If you claim to be one, people and business flock to you. It can be an extremely profitable business, and unfortunately, many recyclers do not do it correctly. Many just collect e-waste and sell it to whoever will take it (and is supposedly credentialed).
One thing is that U.S. legislation has supposedly made it illegal to ship e-waste to certain countries, or certain types of e-waste, without proper certification. The laws are that you have to sell/ship it to a “certified” e-waste company overseas that is buying it from you. The problem though is that the paper trail ends there. So a well-intentioned e-waste company here may have done their due diligence, collected the scrap, and sold it to an overseas recycler, while the overseas company buying it may just turn around and dump it, or sell it to local buyers in that country who are not licensed.
The point is that enforcement of e-waste legislation is extremely difficult as it transits country borders. Now, according to Brent, there are a host of ISO certifications and other standards that an e-waste company needs to pass before they can brand themselves a legitimate outfit. What I gathered from him, however, is that beyond certification, it comes down to the e-waste recycler doing their own research and homework in order to understand exactly where the e-waste will end up — as well as what other options may be available.
On a positive note, Brent was extremely forthcoming about what CAN be recycled — and it’s a lot more than you might consider. Most every e-waste component can be safely broken down, separating out toxic materials, grinding up circuit boards into a near-powder (which can be used to make new circuit boards), plastics melted at low temperatures to be turned into new appliances, and so forth.
He also shared with me information about CTR (cathode ray tubes) which are increasingly piling up as people replace old monitors and TVs with newer plasma and LCD types. It turns out, there are only two recycling plants in the world that can effectively melt down CTRs (which contain leaded glass and many other toxins) into component parts. But more importantly, many developing nations are now actively purchasing old, small CTRs because they can be re-used in NEW televisions in countries – and the smaller CTR size is perfect for a small household where space and electricity are in short supply. RAM, CPUs, and other components from computers can be stripped out and reused for computers in developing countries, as well. So it’s not just about disposing of e-waste, it is also about finding ways to reuse an existing item so it does not become e-waste.
The National Geographic article on e-waste had an important conclusion towards the end. It described a handful of recycling plants in the U.S. which can literally devour all e-waste and find a use for it. Up above I noted about the circuit boards… a 3′ cubic bin of ground up circuit boards sells for a lot of money — and it can be immediately shipped to a few plants (I believe one is in Switzerland) where it can be reprocessed into materials for new circuit boards. This big plant stands 150′ tall, and supposedly it’s only a matter of time before there are enough in the U.S. to be able to handle almost ALL e-waste generated by this country.
The real challenge is to educate consumers about their options, and connect these and other certified e-waste recyclers with the proper channels so it can be a simple matter for the average American consumer to recycle their e-waste safely and efficiently.
Thank you,
David Anderson
