ALCONA GLEN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL E-WASTE FUNDRAISER
On April 19th & April 20th you can drop off your electronic waste at 1310 Innisfil Beach Rd, Alcona Glen Elementary, during school hours. GreenGo Recycling Depot will donate money to Alcona Glen for every pound collected. This is a great oppertunity to help your local school and the environment at the same time!
Please call GreenGo (705) 722-8711 with any questions
I’ve grown up in the scrap metals industry, which is typically the trade of choice for the entrepreneurial poor. In my relatively short tenure in the business I’ve seen a lot. Hot product, boxes ‘dressed’ to look like higher grade materials, false walled shipments, and tare weights that only match the imagination of the scale keeper. The old ‘foot under the scale’ trick is seldom used, but that doesn’t seem to stop the music. The old school scrap trade is synonymous with piracy, so buckle yer’ boots me matey; we be sailing for high seas.
Standing in relatively direct opposition from this vantage we have the modern e-waste industry starting to lay their foundations in Southern Ontario. This industry is highly regulated and a rather controlled one. The organization touting the most certification, documentation, and standards seems to be at the top of the proverbial list.
Now, enter the catalyst: Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES) introduces their new direct incentive spin on the province, allowing approved processors to approach OES and non-OES collectors of e-waste for their volumes, offering them a portion of their provincial incentive. This spin on the market has effectively moved e-waste from the controlled sphere of the provincial program to the free market, open waters so to say. Now with the booty up for grab by seemingly anyone, the pirate fleet is mobilizing.
Whereas e-waste recyclers believe in long term relationships built on service, downstream reliability, chain of custody, and client synergy the scrappers believe only two things alone: price and payment. With the OES effectively commoditizing e-waste, it has also sharpened both edges of the local market. The scrappers are starting to fight for the newest commodity to hit the shelf, and the processors are having to pay for it. So instead of a sleek provincial system that funnels all of the e-waste from ground level into your new iFad device, we now have the wild west with processors battling it out for volume. Albeit I think that this approach is more effective in the long run, as long as money continues to motivate folk, the OES has turned over the keys to the kingdom. So back we go, to where it all began. Until legislation or another program initiative hits the windshield it’s back to good old fashioned scrap trade, at least with the residential, and small commercial volumes (which make up more than 50% of the provincially available volume).
So all you processors with no scrap metal experience, batten down the hatches. Prepare for more drama, action, and material than you have seen in the past 2 years. If it hasn’t started already it’s coming.
And to any scrappers reading this, please do not be offended by the pirate reference. I myself am a free market mercenary, and proud to be so. We will always be the most dangerous men in the room.
Y’arr!
E-waste Fundraising Event
GreenGo Recycling Depot will donate money to Cameron St. Public School for every pound of electronic waste collected. You can help the environment and support your local school all at once!
We accept anything with a cord, circuit board, or battery associated to it. This does not include any large appliances.
A list of acceptable items will be available online at:
When: April 4, 2011-April 8, 2011
Where: 575 Cameron St., Collingwood, On
Contact Info: (705)445-9811
Please call GreenGo Recycling Depot with any questions:<
(705) 722-8711.
If everyone knew more about recycling,
everyone would recycle more.
#1< China
The “c” word in the recycling industry is China. Regardless of their astronomical consumption, incalculable exports, and titan production no one wants to admit going there, being there, and God forbid sending scrap materials there, let alone e-waste in any form.
Unfortunately this paradigm doesn’t run parallel with the reality of our North American existence. China produces the goods, and North Americans buy them, and buy them, and buy them. China then produces more goods, because every single North American needs every single thing they see on TV. The shortfall is China’s local resource base, which doesn’t meet the demands applied. North America however is ripe with primary, and yes, secondary resources. Containers arrive full of doo-dads, gadgets, and game boys and return with the exact same thing, shredded, baled, and pulverized.
Why you ask with our infinitesimal recycling technology? Because at the end of the day the human body is the ultimate machine. It learns, has opposable thumbs, sees full colour spectrums, and can use almost an unlimited array of tools, at least according to the Chinese E-Waste HR manual.
Why are we ashamed? Because in additional to relative harmless and rudimentary separation techniques China also employs some rather distasteful recovery methods, circa mid 1300’s. We’re talking about open air burnings, drums full of acid, and hot plates of melting solder. You can almost taste the cancer.
Regardless of how you approach any situation: Yes, there is always a better way. And no, it’s probably not going to change soon or quickly.
Chinese shame should be put aside so we can focus on Chinese development. Many Chinese companies are employing North American standards alongside China’s unlimited workforce, and they are blooming regardless of the current economic state.
#2: Commingled Product (The E-Waste Salad)
I’ve yet to find a facility that doesn’t produce some type of liable mixed materials. Either sweepings from shredding, bag house fluff, or a horrible little mix of polymeric madness. This general e-waste salad is building up all over North America.
Some are mixing it into their refinery goods AKA: sending it up the stack. Some are trying to sell it as copper bearing pickings to our ‘c’ word friends. Some are storing it religiously hoping that the precious metal content will eventually be of leverage against the high lead content for recovery. And some are spending millions trying to figure out how to process via pelletizing, briquetting, float sink process, catalytic pressure processing, or high compression moulding (floor mats anyone?).
I’ve seen all of these tried, and I don’t know of anyone actually running a successful commercial enterprise with one. At one point they even tried mixing into asphalt as aggregate. Yes, they had plasticy bendy roads that did great with freezing and thawing, and yes they where slippery as hell.
So what to do with our lead lined e-salad? If I knew I wouldn’t be writing blogs in Barrie, Ontario. I’d be living in my high compression moulded false brick home, heated with geothermal, and powered by the diesel recovered from my depolymerisation process.
I sincerely hope to see the day where a single facility puts out clean streams of all the products put into e-waste, which brings us to our last issue.
Hate is a strong word, and no, I’ve never heard anyone from any of the big brand manufacturers say they hate the environment. But actions speak louder than words don’t they?
Regardless of their environmental policies, web pages, speeches, boards of advisors, and the colour green on all their packages their final products are a recycler’s nightmare.
There are many topics to dissect here, but I’m going to focus on plastics. Plastics are difficult to recycle when you have a single stream, let alone a single contaminant. Unlike metals which can tolerate some contamination and can be purified via chemical and refining processes plastics are much more sensitive. They are the kid in school that would burst into tears if someone didn’t say their name right. Yes, that sensitive. A single piece of contamination can ruin entire melts permanently. Now let’s back up.
You buy a printer. It has an outer shell, buttons, a screen, some more buttons, and a bunch of little gears and runners inside all made of different plastics. In any given piece of technology you can have literally dozens of different polymers all made by different manufacturers. You now shred this printer in your first stage of e-waste recycling, and what do you get? Issue #2: E-waste salad.
Now, it is possible for manufacturers to use one or two types of polymers effectively or even introduce elements that support recycling separation. But they don’t. And why do you ask? Because they find the cheapest vendor for each specific part, and that vendor finds the cheapest plastic that meets the manufacturers’ minimum requirements.
Yes, I know they are trying to keep the lowest price possible to maintain competitiveness, but come on people. We’re literally choking the planet with our crap.
The solution: Manufacturers need to have a strict set of recycling standards put in place that control the base materials used in production. Also, every item that is manufactured should have a reported recovery value and de-manufacturing guide. If two different polymers are contained within close proximity separation alloys and additives should be introduced for eddy current and magnetic sorting.
If we can manufacture the technology, we can take it apart. We just need to coordinate the industries. Right now the recycling portion of the industry is regarded as an afterthought (and a marketing spin). It’s more than that.
Going forward secondary recovery will be the primary source for commodities.
It is amazing. Consider that “Local Scrap Guy” in his pick-up with his 10 pounds of copper is instantly affected by the drop in copper prices. With the streamlining of global information, the aggressive procurement of primary and secondary materials, and international logistics network we move material like never before. We’re also impacted as never before.
The skyrocketing copper prices pulled scrap copper out of every field, corner, and ungaurded business or industrial complex. Many people in Canada have tried to pull the plug from their block heaters this winter only to find the cord missing, or cut. A local cell phone tower went down a few weeks ago, causing about 4 hours of service loss and costing $150,000 in damages. All for 10 feet of low grade insulated copper wire.
The local Police have had so many reports of stolen metal at this point your better off calling, well, anyone really. I promise you’ll get more of a response.
But now, the end of the story (for a short while). The world is flooded with copper. When you pair this with the cooling of the Chinese Export market you really put the brakes on. So if you have the cash: hold, hold, hold. And if you don’t: sell, sell, sell.
For all you mid sized copper buyers and brokers, may the peace of the Patron Saint of Copper Trading be with you.
Please excuse me, I have to try and convince my buyer that our current sales orders were dated for last week.
