As new technology arises on what seems to be a day-to-day basis, proper ways to dispose of the yesterday’s technology becomes a major issue.

We quickly see that there are four types of waste.

• E-Waste that it functional and can be easily refurbished and can be reused in our country.  This is refurbished and resold locally.
• E-Waste that is functional but is too old to be used in the US, however it has value in other nations.  This waste is bundled and sold to exporters.
• E-Waste that has no reuse value, due to age or condition, this waste is broken down and recycled for the materials.
• E-Waste that has no value or is toxic, and unfortunately this waste will often go to the landfill, we strive hard to reduce this to the bear minimum, with less than 2% of our waste going to this category.

We want to make sure as much E-Waste as possible stays out of landfills and gets an opportunity at a second life. We strive to think of a downstream use for everything that we receive, and this is why we take almost everything electronic that you may want to drop off, we figure that we have a much better chance of doing something with it than a member of the general public.

We can recycle every kind of computer that’s ever been manufactured, First and foremost, recycling is only one function that this company provides. What we really do is try to provide a complete solution for all obsolete or excess electronics. It can be any kind of electronics. It may be new equipment that’s excess, or it may be old ancient dinosaur type stuff.

If it’s newer equipment, our first plan of action is to find or establish a resale market for that equipment,” We want to keep that equipment in its intended form. We want to extend the life of those products. So we go all out in the world looking for potential markets for this equipment. If none exists, then we start looking at the potential for recovery of either parts or components.”

If you look at the example of a PC itself, once you open that computer, there are a variety of components. One of the components is the power supply. The power supply in and of itself could be resold. If not, there’s copper recovery and other metals in that power supply that could be recycled.”

The boards themselves are wonderful examples of precious metal recovery items. Not only in the gold contacts that are typically on the board, but in some of the integrated circuitry itself there is very high grade gold bonding wires. So, those are the types of things that we’re looking for. So, once you move outside of the realm of resale activities, then we really focus on the commodities market as they relate to metals like aluminum, all your non-ferrous metals, stainless steel, copper, and then the precious metals, which are predominantly gold, platinum, palladium.

So, can every part of a computer be recycled?

There’s really nothing out of a computer that goes to waste.  The cables are all recyclable. The packaging equipment that it comes in is also something that we recycle. Even if it comes in cardboard packaging, we break down the cardboard, and use it for shipping and packing, and recycle that as well. If there’s any kind of foam inserts or anything like that, we recycle that. Shrink wrap, we recycle that.”

The only thing that we don’t have an active recycling operation addressed for is paper,” he said. “And it’s because we receive so little of it in. Everything else, even down to the aluminum cans of the sodas that we drink inside the offices, is all recycled.