|
Page 1 of 2
By Doug Bartholomew
When the first Earth Day was celebrated on May 1, 1970, no one imagined the computer revolution that was to sweep America and the world over the next four decades.
Similarly, no one could have imagined the vast and problematic electronics waste stream that would evolve to plague the world in 2009. As Americans and citizens of other nations continue to discard old personal computers, televisions, cellphones, printer cartridges, and other e-junk, the problem of how to responsibly deal with this river of hazardous metals and non-biodegradable plastics continues largely unsolved.
Especially troublesome for chief information officers is their legacy: waves of obsolete PCs that must be replaced every few years, not to mention the untold thousands of tired or used-up servers, copy machines, hubs, routers, and other devices.
But there are some glimmers of hope. One such hope is a company mentioned earlier on CIOZone (see "EWaste: Innovative Choices"), Creative Recycling Systems Inc. (CRS). Based in Tampa, Fla., CRS is the creation of former Florida real estate investor-turned entrepreneur Jon Yob. For the last three years, Yob's operation, which includes nine facilities on the East Coast, has been recycling all manner of electronics waste. The company's state of the art shredding, sorting, and reselling approach to e-waste is widely viewed as one of the most environmentally friendly solutions to the problem anywhere on the planet.
At CRS' flagship plant in Tampa, Yob's brainchild, a warehouse-size machine he has named David, constantly eats away at its formidable but gradually succumbing nemesis, what Yob calls "Goliath"—the steadily growing mountain of TVs, computers, plastic monitor husks, discolored keyboards, motherboards, hard drives, and other electronics trash that lies outside.
The towering stockpile of e-junk comes from state recycling programs, corporations, consumers, and just about anybody who's willing to find a way to get their old computers and other scrap into David's metal teeth. Installed in 2006, the $3-million machine is expected to process about 100 million pounds in 2009-a 50% increase over the previous year's volume. The system is highly automated, utilizing shredders and material separators. The material is pulverized in an enclosure under negative air pressure, so that air filters capture the dust generated in the process.
The material to be crushed and shredded and then sorted is first checked over by a CRS worker to see if it can be refurbished or otherwise reused. Then the material is sorted into large containers. Finally, the containers get a date with David. Today's menu for David might be mixed plastics, or audio and video components, or motherboards.
"We can feed an entire copy machine into our shredders, and they will separate out the steel, aluminum, precious metals, and plastics," CRS CEO Yob says. Even the plastics gets sorted via a system of optical scanners that separate the material by color and resin, so that it can be resold and reused for various kinds of products, not just those the ubiquitous day-glo orange traffic cone.
Next: eWaste Making Business Sense
|
