Thursday, February 04, 2010

Six ways to dramatically improve your Electronic recycling program

1. Effective communication between departments is imperative to utilize products. Can the shipping department use those old computers that the engineering department has outgrown? IT and facilities management organizations often do not engage or cooperate in the operation of the recycling program. Cross departmental reutilization is one of the easiest and most effective means of recycling. This can be as simple as timely emails to other departments listing available equipment or as complex as a complete intranet system.

2. Don’t forget the toner cartridges and batteries. Many companies are not making their employees aware that many other items besides the IT equipment have recyclable content. Batteries are hazardous waste also, so throwing them away is certainly very “un-green”. Batteries are actually very easy for a good electronics recycler to dispose of environmentally; they were one of the first types of electronics to be recycled. Toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges are also recyclable. A very easy way to get a program established for these items is to place recycling bins in the office area. Office supply houses have attractive recycling bins in many sizes and shapes to suit your needs.

3. Choose WEEE compliant manufacturers whenever possible. WEEE compliant products are manufactured to be easily repairable and recyclable by mandate. This is a European mandate that is affecting the manufacturers in the US. The WEEE and RoHs mandates of Europe are good things to track as they will impact manufacturing and recycling in the US profoundly. We are all waiting to see how this all will settle, but in the mean time it is extremely important to stay on top of the laws. WEEE products are identified by the crossed out trash can symbol.

4. Choose your recycling company carefully. There are many newcomers to the field of electronic recycling trying to make a quick buck, or quickly build a business to sell off to a large conglomerate. Your company will quickly lose its importance to a large company with venture capital money governing the way. Companies that are members of organizations like International Association of Electronic Recyclers (IAER), and particularly ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 companies follow strict compliance procedures. You are more likely to get fully compliant recycling from ISO companies, and good record keeping is an ISO requirement also.

5. Establish your thought processes. There are basically two recycling methods: shred and scrap, and re-use. BCD Electro is a strong proponent of re-use. It is a misnomer to think that the only way to keep proprietary electronic material out of the hands of criminals is to shred it. To re-use a product is a much higher form of recycling than to shred and scrap. When the material must be scrapped, dismantling by hand, though more costly, is a much cleaner method than shredding. Shredded material by its own process contains many constituent materials, and is not as pure as hand sorted material. As and example; disk drives contain copper, aluminum and pc boards that are easily recyclable when disassembled, but after they have been shredded the materials are all mixed and twisted together making them much less desirable. I visited a major military contractors manufacturing facility once that was hand disassembling the hard drives and selling the parts as scrap.

6. Finally, don’t settle for a cookie cutter recycling program. Each company has different recycling needs. Do you need a company that can recycle paper, foam packing and Styrofoam as well as your electronics? Can your recycler help you with hazardous materials also? Consignment revenue sharing agreements are the best for long dollar returns, but is your company uncomfortable with consignment at this time? Do you need a cash offer for your high value recyclable materials? Do you need a recycler that can come to your location and inventory the product before it leaves your building?

Just ask!

Prepared by:
Bob Harris
President
BCD Electro

214 630 4298
www.bcdelectro.com

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