(re) blog: dialogue with Redemtech

Refurbished Computer Initiative: Training Teens Who Train Elders

2008-11-21T12:21:38-08:00

One of Redemtech’s many initiatives is a strategic relationship with TechSoup Global, a California-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide computer knowledge and resources to other nonprofit and non-government organizations (NGOs) in North America and around the globe. We help them choose, implement and sustain the essential technology needed to serve their communities.

Our project with Redemtech is called the Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI). RCI provides reliable, warrantied desktop and laptop computers to U.S. nonprofits at the lowest possible cost online via our TechSoup Stock platform.

One great example of the impact of this work is the Mission Digital Connectors inner-city youth program, which uses Redemtech refurbished RCI computers to reach the young and the old in San Francisco’s Mission District.

The digital connector students meet at the nonprofit Caminos Computer Lab on Valencia Street in San Francisco where they have worked for the past year providing computer training and tech support to Latino families.

The teens learn basic computer skills and then they teach these skills to seniors in several housing project computer labs. They also take field trips, make autobiographical videos, conduct community interviews, and practice public speaking at school assemblies (before other students, families and city officials).

Upon graduation of the 10-week course, each student receives a refurbished laptop (with new software) from the Refurbished Computer Initiative. High school junior Cecily Alfaro summed up the program by saying: “We had a cool event at Valencia Gardens Housing where we gave away a free laptop and we signed many people up for the program. Even my dad and mom signed in. I was like …Wow!”

E-Stewardship Taking Responsibility in the Information Age

2008-11-19T10:41:39-08:00

While producing a corporate video some years ago, I conducted a series of interviews with a diverse group of employees of a major telecom company across a five-state region stretching from New Jersey to Illinois. To arrange the interviews, I worked with a variety of community relations managers who escorted me from facility to facility so I could set up my camera and ask a few questions. But only once did this involve a giant telephone that would fit comfortably in the palm of King Kong’s paw.

Somewhere in central Indiana, I found myself following a company representative with a gigantic red telephone hitched to his car. The phone was used for community parades and other events, but it made for a strange sight flying down a rural road between rows of cornfields on the way to a meeting.

So while I drove, I grabbed the video camera and shot some footage. The little clip of the big phone zipping along the highway wound up being used in a series of corporate conferences where a collection of employee faces appeared on a huge screen behind the CEO while he spoke. After one such event in Chicago, the CEO told me he could always tell when the video behind his back transferred from the friendly faces to the big telephone because the audience always laughed.

“I could be talking about anything – good news or bad – and the audiences would always react the same way,” he told me.

Today there is a venue for funny, unusual or otherwise remarkable videos that reaches far beyond the 5,000 people who witnessed the flying phone all those years ago. It’s called YouTube and it grabs the attention of 83 million unique viewers every month.

Redemtech is featured prominently in a new video on YouTube. The video was produced by the Basel Action Network (BAN) and highlights the serious efforts by reputable electronics recyclers to combat the severe environmental and health damage inflicted by illegal imports of e-waste by disreputable vendors. The BAN video depicts deplorable scenes of tragedy wrought by e-waste dumping and the subsequent industry that sprung up in one Chinese village where indigent workers disassemble electronics despite the health and environmental impact of handling toxic materials.

While it has to compete with finger-biting babies, dancing parakeets and parodies of The Office, the BAN video is getting some good play and perhaps creating greater awareness of the e-waste crisis that continues to grow worse each day. Despite some of the heartbreaking images, the tone and message of the BAN video is positive – because it seeks to show that all is not lost. As long as there are reputable companies devoting all of their energies and expertise to managing e-waste properly, there is hope. Hope that businesses that fraudulently claim to properly dispose of e-waste and then dump it in developing nations will be overwhelmed by true stewards of the global environment.

The Basel Action Network and the Electronics TakeBack Coalition also has launched an e-waste certification program designed to prohibit export of toxic e-waste to developing countries. Redemtech is one of the founding e-Stewards. The e-Steward Initiative will represent the first independently audited and accredited e-waste recycler certification program forbidding the dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators; the use of prison labor; and the unauthorized release of private data.

If you’d like to see the BAN video in which Redemtech plays a role, please visit YouTube here. The video also is available on Redemtech’s website here.

Sierra Club How Green Is Your PC Quiz

2008-11-17T12:25:45-08:00

The Sierra Club has come out with a surprisingly fun and informative little quiz on green PCs. Some of the more interesting questions include:

Every wonder how much energy laptops use vs desktop PC?
How much energy a screensaver saves?
How much more power computer processors use as they get more powerful?
How much lifetime energy consumption of a PC occurs before you buy it?
Whether it’s more energy efficient to shut down and restart your computer during the day or just leaving it running?

To take the full Sierra Club quiz, find it here. See how well you do on the quiz!

60 Minutes Hits the Toxic Jackpot

2008-11-09T19:39:57-08:00

The CBS News program 60 Minutes just ran a hard-hitting segment titled The Electronic Wasteland on the toxic e-waste trade between the United States and China. It was classic 60 Minutes, featuring human suffering, an apparently unscrupulous businessman, the Chinese underworld, and an intrepid reporter—Scott Pelley—exposing it all. For insiders in the electronics recycling industry, this is an old story. A majority of recyclers increase their profits by shipping hard-to-recycle commodities to buyers in developing countries where the lack of worker safety and environmental regulations have created an e-waste gold rush. Tonight, CBS News became the latest company to profit from this toxic trade.

Consumers who caught the segment are probably shocked to learn that the old computer they left with their local recycler could now be poisoning people in China. Corporations have understood the problem for years, and almost universally require that their e-waste be domestically recycled. But businesses also frequently choose to work with the cheapest recyclers available, and rarely ever audit their vendor's practices. Such lack of due diligence makes ostensibly responsible companies complicit with the toxic traders who are recyclers in name only.

The producers of 60 Minutes earned their 50 pieces of silver when they illuminated the problem on commercial television without offering viewers a constructive alternative. The Basel Action Network, which provided CBS with production assistance, has been working for more than 10 years to eliminate e-waste exports (view BAN's new film on e-waste: Taking Responsibility in the Information Age). BAN works to identify recyclers who can be trusted to do the right thing, and designates these companies as e-Stewards. Redemtech is one of a few e-Steward Founders—recyclers providing financial support for BAN's efforts to make the industry more accountable.

It should be noted that BAN's standards are the highest in the industry, but are the least we should expect: no e-waste exports, no landfill, no incineration, and no prison labor. If companies wanting to be environmentally and socially responsible lack the expertise to effectively audit their recycling vendors, now BAN offers an alternative to simply trusting the lowest bidder to do the right right thing—the e-Stewards.

Beyond Green: Roadmap to Sustainable Computing

2008-11-07T12:42:04-08:00

Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation at the recent Gartner IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management Summit in San Diego. Our material was based on a new IDC whitepaper by David Daoud, Beyond Power: IT's Roadmap to Sustainable Computing. We ran a little long, as always happens when people with passion for a topic are given a podium, so I promised to do our Q&A online.

Does the GAO report on the EPA and the Business Week article exploiting recyclers' dishonesty hurt the industry? What's the effect on your business?

Enterprise customers have spoken with a nearly unanimous voice that they want to see ewaste managed sustainably. It certainly hurts the industry when recyclers ignore their obligations to do so, exporting electronic scrap instead of recycling it. The GAO report highlights the reality that prosecution of unscrupulous recyclers must take place in the media to raise awareness of this fraud in the marketplace. Exposing the cheaters of the industry will increase demand for companies like Redemtech that have set a high bar for responsible and accountable recycling.

How can an organization balance the benefits of reuse with the need for newer machines to run upgraded or new versions of software?

When we define sustainability as addressing not only social and environmental concerns, but also financial requirements, user productivity must be part of the reuse calculous. To minimize total cost of ownership, software, like hardware, should be used as long as possible without upgrading. Assuming that the business case for upgrading software has been made, a number of measures can be employed to facilitate reuse instead of refresh. 1) cascade older assets to less demanding users; 2) consider upgrading memory and perhaps storage during refurbishment; 3) test new software on the old hardware to determine practical usability.

What changes have you seen from hardware manufacturers to make their products more "green?"...are manufacturers making the hardware less hazardous?

Equipment manufacturers are under pressure from a variety of environmental interest groups to make their products both less hazardous and easier to recycle. There are initiatives to remove lead and mercury from electronics, which will substantially reduce the toxicity. Manufacturers are beginning to design with the end in mind, to reduce the cost and improve the materials recovery of the recycling process.

If you lengthen asset lifecycles, how do you manage increasing support requirements?

A primary factor behind increasing support requirements for older equipment relates to software and user behavior. Even in a locked down environment, spyware, plug-ins, and a variety of non-approved software will manage to find their way onto a typical system—with a corresponding loss of speed and/or reliability. Performance is also often degraded by fragmented file systems. In these cases, the refurbishing process will restore a systems reliability and speed with every redeployment. To minimize potential hardware failures, Redemtech recommends not reusing sytems that have aged beyond 80% of the planned lifecycle. We recommend a that organizations maintain a small stock of refurbished spares to immediately swap out any systems with hardware failure. If economical, the failed systems should be repaired and put in the swap pool; otherwise, they should be harvested for working parts, and the balance proplerly recycled.

Does Redemtech reuse in your office?

Redemtech has an ongoing initiative to make our business more sustainable. Our offices are outfitted entirely with second hand furniture (it looks nice). We procure used computer equipment from our customers whenever possible; our desktop platform is virtually all refurbished second-user systems. We have reduced paper use by working from electronic documents, and making greater use of projectors in our meeting rooms rather than hard copies. In our break rooms we eliminated disposable cups in favor of ceramic mugs and glasses. In addition to electronics, we recycle paper, corrugated cardboard, and pallets.

Is their any recognition for companies that are doing it (electronics recycling) right?

The Basel Action Network (BAN) has developed standards for responsible recycling, and recognizes electronics recyclers who are willing to commit to those standards as "e-stewards." These standards are basically "no export, no landfill, no incineration, and no use of prison labor. BAN will recognize any company that is willing to commit to use only approved e-stewards to manage their ewaste as an "Enterprise e-Steward." On a broader scale, there are a number of securities indexes based on sustainability, most notably the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for investors that want to put their money behind their environmental values.

Is the government playing a role in enforcement? We viewed U.S. government agency asset tags on equipment in the BAN video. Is there accountability in government?

The federal government has been extremely lax in enforcing the few regulations that are in place. Except for CRTs, export is completely legal under federal law, so it is not surprising to find government asset tags in China. Many federal agencies use the federal prison industries to recycle their surplus electronics, and UNICOR is notably NOT a BAN Pledge signatory. And as the GAO found, the EPA does little to enforce the CRT rule, never mind the flood of other electronics taken out of service each year. States have been more stringent with anti-landfill regulations, but lack jurisdiction over the export problem.

How can our company determine how our recycler is mananaging our recycling?

Only by the numbers can you hold your recycler accountable. Conventional Certificates of Destruction are a recycler's way of saying "trust me." The only way to be sure that everything is recycled and not exported or landfilled is by mass balance accounting and reconciliation. At the simplest level, record the amount of weight you send to your recycler. Compare against your recycler's report of weight received. Require disposition records from your recycler for raw materials approximately equal in weight to the total.

The Facts Behind Depreciation Rates for Used IT Equipment

2008-11-07T12:15:04-08:00

In the IT industry, it’s long since become conventional wisdom that used PCs and other related technology equipment can depreciate as much as 6% a month, at least early in its lifecycle.

Whether it’s true or not (we’ll get to that in just a moment), it’s something everyone can readily understand, from the company’s CFO all the way down to the asset manager. The system has been set up so that everyone feels they understand it and can grasp the business of selling used goods. The belief in the underlying truth of that statistic forces most companies to try to sell their used material quickly, generally within 30 days.

But is it true?

Having worked exclusively in the technology remarketing industry for many years, I can tell you that it’s not nearly so black and white a situation as this. Actually, there are many variables in the selling process which are a part of maximizing the value—and thus the price—of a product being retired. And if you don’t really understand the larger dynamics of that market, you’re reduced to putting more trust than you should in one-size-fits-all notions, such as this 6% number.

I liken it to NFL football, where the interest in acquiring certain veteran players can often be similarly pegged to their ages. But would anyone seriously argue that the same market dynamics hold true for future Hall of Famers like quarterback Brett Favre as for a no-name journeyman player, or that the value of either can be reduced to a formula, without first considering the specific market condition for their services, or whether it comes before, after or during the football season?

Of course not. The reality in both cases is: it depends. It depends upon how good of shape that player (or equipment) happens to be in. It depends what the particular needs of various teams happens to be at any one time. Your team may not put any value in a veteran quarterback when all your quarterbacks are healthy. But the moment your starter is lost for the season due to injury, the price you’re willing to pay for a good replacement takes a sudden leap. That might be doubly true shortly before the playoffs.

In our industry, seasonality is similarly crucial. While equipment will depreciate as much as 6% a month, and on average 2-3% per month over its lifecycle, you still have to account for seasonal swings in price, especially the prices in the fall season, and doubly so during the Holiday seasons. That means, at least from our point of view, that rushing to sell equipment in 30 days can often be counterproductive, reducing the price you can get for it. In our experience, it takes an average of 60 business days to maximize a company’s assets in the resale process.
These aren’t mere impressions about the resale market. At Redemtech we have a decade of actual sales and price data on a broad range of used equipment, and we can plainly see the trends. That data provides us, and of course our clients, a meaningful edge.

And yet, at least based upon requests from various RFPs that regularly cross our desks, it would seem that most corporations don’t put much stock in the income to be gained from this equipment at the end of its useful life. Mostly, they’re focused on properly closing the books on it within a short time period, again, based on that faulty assumption of six-percent-a-month depreciation. For these organizations, anything earned in the aftermarket can be like found revenue, or pennies—actually dollars—from heaven.

When you have a partner with a sophisticated merchandising system for—such as our Redemtech Retrac system—it can increase the income from used equipment, and consequently lower the total cost of ownership of IT assets. I maintain from long experience that having a well-developed merchandising system and knowledgeable sales reps in the remarketing area inevitably reduces the depreciation number, sometimes considerably. To return to the football metaphor for a moment, it’s not unlike a veteran player with an experienced, cagey agent, who understands the nuances of the market and knows all the team general managers, and is thus in a position to maximize his client’s total price.

Next time, I’ll delve into the subject of how you can tell if your vendor is savvy enough to fetch you the highest prices during the remarketing process. Meanwhile, I invite you to leave any thoughts or comments you might have.

E-waste Poses a Monster Problem

2008-10-31T04:45:43-07:00

Got a phone call from an old friend the other day. I recognized his voice immediately by the series of atomic snorts accented by a metallic high-pitched wail, like someone was twisting rusty railroad tracks around an angry dolphin. A little puff of smoke escaped from my cell phone, signaling big news: Godzilla got a new job

“I haven’t heard from you since you had that little spat with Megalon,” I told the big green former monster movie star who had been knocking around everywhere from Tinsletown to Bollywood in search of work. He still was sore about that Cloverfield business in New York. “And that was some major battle you had there with Ghidorah, the three-headed golden dragon from space,” I added.

“Oh, that was totally overblown by the online news media,” Godzilla complained gruffly. “You know how it is; words are exchanged; things are thrown. The next thing you know, you’re all over YouTube.”

“Only in this case, you tossed an office building and a jumbo jet,” I reminded him.

“It was a small jumbo jet, okay?” he said, irritation creeping into his voice as it often did in the early days, right after those atomic bombs woke him from a prehistoric slumber. Talk about oversleeping!

“That fight with that giant arthropod got you kicked out of Japan, didn’t it?”

Godzilla paused and I didn’t know if he was upset about my comment or trying to think of a fiery comeback. Sometimes he’ll surprise you with his clever repartee.

“I was ready to move on anyway. I took some time off and waded around the world for awhile until I came ashore in this nice little village where I found work right away. I just fell into this job and it’s a perfect fit for a hot property like me,” the monster told me.

I let that comment pass like Mothra in a low flight pattern.

“So tell me about your new job,” I said, trying to tilt the conversation away from Godzilla’s less endearing qualities. “Must be something special.”

“Well, I’m into computer technology now. No more boxing with Rodan or having to toss Mechagodzilla II over my shoulder. All I do is take these computer parts that people bring me, heat them up a bit with my breath so they can yank some of the precious metals out of them, then I burn up what’s left. Cool, huh?”

“You’re incinerating e-waste?” I grumbled.

“Yeah! It’s a natural for me – with my atomic breath. I just exhale my super-heated vapor on the leftover circuit boards and wires and other mangled stuff and poof! No more computer scraps!”

“You are such a dinosaur!” I shouted angrily. “Don’t you know how incinerating e-waste destroys the environment? It’s one of the most destructive, deadly things you can do!”

There was a long silence at the other end. For a moment, I could barely hear him breathing nuclear fire into the phone.

“For the first time in my life, I’m fitting in with others,” he replied defensively, relying on the same tone of voice I’d heard him use to deflect incoming missiles while he stood on top of a bus station and gobbled a few passengers. “I don’t have to tear the roof off of buildings to meet new people any more. I don’t have to pop the top off a locomotive and cram the passenger cars in my teeth to get attention. I’m living in this sweet little village on the bank of a picturesque river. Or it would be scenic if it wasn’t for all the mountains of old computers lying around. And hardly anyone seems to be afraid of me.”

“That’s probably because they’re more afraid of the toxins in the equipment they’re disassembling by hand every day,” I replied pointedly. “I imagine those primitive smelting operations where workers stir a fire-pit to extract small amounts of gold could be terribly more important than a hundred-foot monster with a spiky, thirty-foot tail.”

“I don’t think most of the people working there are aware there’s anything bad about this stuff. And it doesn’t bother me – I’ve got thick scaly skin. Plus, I’m radioactive already, thanks to all of those atomic bombs. What’s in these old computers that’s so bad?

I sighed heavily. “Well, computers are full of toxic substances that poison the men, women and children who are paid starving wages to extract the metals. And when you incinerate the heavy metals found in electronics – the lead and cadmium and mercury - you’re poisoning the air, not to mention the toxic dioxins and furans released from burning plastic and chemicals. Toxins in the rest of the scraps leach into the water supply or contaminate the soil when they are dumped in landfills.”

“Hunh,” Godzilla said. “What baffles me more than how that stupid turtle Gamara can fly is where it all comes from.”

“Where’s it all come from?” I said, surprised that he didn’t already suspect the dubious origins of e-waste. So I told him

“A lot of the electronics collected in the United States for recycling are actually shipped to China, India, Nigeria and other countries in Asia and Africa where environmental safety standards are weak or don’t exist or are easily bypassed by unscrupulous recyclers. And protections for the poorly paid workers simply don’t exist.”

“I made a little hat out of an old water tower to keep the ashes out of my dorsal plates, but I have noticed that there is a definite lack of protective gear around here,” Godzilla said. “Heck, even when I was stomping around Tokyo, I knew to put some boots on my big feet sometimes to keep from squishing cars and debris between my toenails.”

Thinking of all the holes in the infrastructure Godzilla had left in his wake whenever he went on one of his destructive binges, I wondered aloud about the big monster’s carbon footprint.

“As happy as you sound in your new profession, I think you need to find another job that’s a little more environmentally friendly,” I suggested. “I worry about you, GZ. And I fear for the environment.”

“I guess you’re right,” Godzilla lamented. “But I suppose I do have a head start on doing what’s right for the global environment.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I could almost picture him looking down at his bumpy, moss-colored belly scales. “I’m already pretty green.”

Tomorrow’s News Today, Part 3

2008-10-27T11:21:50-07:00

DATELINE: Washington, D.C. Oct. 27, 2043 – An economic disaster that analysts have compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Not-So-Great Depression of 2008-10 was averted today as fast-acting legislators sold the Lunar Colonies for $700 quadrillion in a bail-out plan that should solve many financial problems around the world.

Another holographic newspaper article from the future arrived today, relatively speaking. As you may recall from past blogs, my future self occasionally sends newspaper clippings from 20 or 30 years down the line so I can relate what may happen in the years to come. This item from the L.U.N.A. Today newspaper comes from my great-grandson, who apparently read in my best-selling autobiography (published in 2024) that I used to print future missives from myself in the Redemtech blog. Apparently, according to my great-grandson’s personal note, by 2043, I’ve left Earth to explore the galaxy, so the duty fell to yet-to-be-born Bartley Elvis Indiana Starbuck Porter to pick up the slack.

In these tough economic times, it’s great to see that we’ll survive the recent turmoil, but the impact of our current crisis has some shocking, albeit pleasant, ramifications in the years ahead, if this glowing news-o-gram is to be believed. Let me quote some more from the article:

Financial analysts say they are shocked by the legislative move to sell Colonial Luna – long a losing investment for the real estate and banking industries – for such a large profit, thereby averting global economic disaster. “Not since the 2008 Presidential Election has there been such a wide-impacting government surprise,” said economist Lehman Carnegie III, referring to the unexpected write-in landslide election of Miley Cyrus in the Nov. 4, 2008, presidential election.

Similar to the surprising impact of the so-called Hannah Montana Era of American politics, environmental groups hope the sale of the lunar colonies to the Galactic Speculators Alliance from Zoobidoobah IV will spur a fresh start for the once heavily forested Moon that was unfortunately polluted shortly after terraforming by unwanted shipments of electronic waste. Those e-waste shipments took place for about 100 years before the Moon was deemed unsuitable for human life again.

Luckily, the wise people of 2008 saw the economic crisis as a wake-up call to better manage their finances and their global environment, the article continues. Apparently, in the years ahead, drastic measures are taken by world governments to block the export of e-waste, ban landfilling and incineration of computer equipment containing toxic materials and generally alter the global approach toward refurbishing and reusing equipment. This heralded a whole new era of reducing the environmental impact of IT equipment that will change the world for the better.

I’m hopeful, as I read my great-grandson’s newspaper, that these outlandish claims aren’t merely the outcome of some alternate future like those postulated in popular science fiction stories. Whether or not Hannah Montana gets elected president or the economic crisis heals, the truth remains that the best investment humanity can make in its future is to guarantee survival of our environment.

Red Flag Rules Will Impact Most Businesses

2008-10-23T04:57:09-07:00

Historians claim the earliest reference to the use of a red flag for an official purpose arose in the early 17th century when armies used a red flag to signal that they were prepared to do battle. Since that time, red flags have been utilized for many purposes, but generally have come to mean a warning. When you see a red flag, you are to take notice.

Most U.S. businesses need to take notice of the mandatory Nov. 1, 2008, deadline to comply with new regulations of the U.S. Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), referred to as the Red Flag Rules. Enacted on Jan. 1, the regulations apply to a very broad list of businesses, including financial institutions and “creditors” with “covered accounts.” The U.S. Federal Trade Commission defines a creditor as “lenders such as banks, finance companies, automobile dealers, mortgage brokers, utility companies and telecommunications companies,” but the list is not all-inclusive.

As stated above, the regulations apply to all businesses that have “covered accounts,” which includes any account for which there is a foreseeable risk of identity theft. This significantly expands the definition to include all companies, regardless of size, that maintain or otherwise possess consumer information for a business purpose.

As a company that seeks to ensure regulatory compliance for data privacy, Redemtech is concerned that its customers understand the impact the Red Flag rules will have on business. Financial industry analysts say the Red Flag regulations currently are the top regulatory compliance issue for all institutions. As more regulations are enacted to protect confidential customer data, businesses must pay closer attention to related issues, such as compliance with data security and secure disposition of IT assets, experts contend

To meet the Nov. 1 compliance deadline, many institutions have sought help from service providers, security vendors, information security practitioners and risk assessment companies. A Gartner research report said new Red Flags regulations will enforce more-rigorous fraud screening in the banking industry by year-end 2009. This will spur the adoption of fraud-detection technologies in other sectors, especially e-commerce.

Compliance analysts say non-compliance with the Red Flag rules will lead to potential federal and civil penalties based on unfair deceptive acts and practices violations. The negative publicity generated by such penalties would come at a time when consumers already are wondering if their money and information are safe.

Upon meeting compliance, institutions still will need to periodically update their programs, analysts said, suggesting the following factors as triggers to an update:

• If there are any breaches or new identity theft risks to an institution
• If an institution offers new covered accounts or gets into new lines of business
• If an institution has new service providers or business partners

With so much on the line, businesses need to keep up with the changes that will come with the new Red Flag rules. Like the military forces of old, only companies that are prepared to do battle will be victorious.

Low Value E-Waste Processing: Are U.S. Scrap Metal Smelters the Missing Link?

2008-10-21T06:24:23-07:00

In 1977 - before cell phones, CDs and a then-bearish 15-17-cent-a-pound Lead (Pb) market - for a short time I worked overseeing a lead products warehouse. To my surprise, the warehouse consisted of more than 50 lead-base products. Back then, the range of products derived from recycled lead from our smelter next door amazed me. Lead came (the kind you find in Tiffany glass), as well as oil drilling bits, sheet lead, oxide, pigments, an assortment of solders, varieties of lead alloys and ship/boat anodes. One of the best features of the job was interacting with customers and truckers from all across the U.S.

I continued working in the smelter supervising battery decasing, then reverb and blast furnaces and finally lead alloying operations. I recall using - struggling with, really - old equipment. As a side project, I began updating and maintaining some 1930s-era pollution-control technology. My work quickly came into sharper perspective when I was asked to help oversee construction of a new smelter’s pollution control equipment, later modifying what didn’t work.

After the construction/modification period was over, as environmental manager, I helped operate the largest modern secondary lead (Pb) smelter of its time. Once it went into operation, producing 150,000 pounds per day of pure and alloyed lead ingot (called pigs, hogs and sows) was considered a normal day’s routine.

Everything was pristine and state-of-the-art. We had a new fully equipped laboratory, strong ventilation systems with in-line VOC/CO incineration, high-efficiency filtration, efficient sulfur dioxide absorption, rain water retention-lined pond and acid treatment systems. All process variables were monitored by sensors with programmable logic control through custom software. But this system was frustrating to the old timers.

I recall one day asking Joe Taylor, a union lead man with 30 years of experience, why his team wasn’t using the new lab equipment. He responded, “I can see when the pot (one of a dozen 40-ton pots) is ready.” Sure enough, after checking behind him many times, I found that he was right. I later asked him how he did this; how he knew the pot was within specifications. He responded in multiple riddles. Much later, I figured it out, but you had to be on the floor and observe the metal treatment reaction closely, since the heat emitted was limiting. “Not in the control room looking at the gauges,” Joe once joked, though with some seriousness (you know the type).

One reason I like the smelting industry is it’s a place where grassroots smelter knowledge was earned, not given. And this experience also answered my internal nagging question - why the lab techs never seemed busy. I realized later they were there more for end-of-process quality assurance than for process control. Still, I respected the old timers’ metallurgical knowledge, and realized that even with all the technical sophistication, the furnace and refining team had a special skill I wanted to learn.

The new smelter had five control rooms of the kind you perhaps recall from the movie China Syndrome, with flow diagram operation, variable displays and massive computers. For 1981, it was impressive to be monitoring and controlling hundreds of I/O operational variables with proportional logic control span and flow confirmation. I felt fortunate to work there. Even though my friends thought I was crazy, I learned a lot from the experience, especially about the struggles with regulatory compliance, even when you have the best pollution equipment and controls available.

I stopped working in the lead smelter in 1985. Ten years later, the smelter set up an electrical power plant, using heat from furnace exhaust to generate steam. I thought it was a great idea. Since then, these and other similar experiences have forever influenced my views about the recycling industry. Those views on complex compliance matters and the application of control standards and principals have also carried over into e-waste metal processing standards.

One interesting thing worth noting that I learned from that experience: copper, lead, aluminum, gold and platinum all use similar process equipment, but do not share the same control standards.

Years later, I find myself relying upon these experiences to guide me through the downstream e-waste recycling maze. As a result of my smelting experiences, I’m opposed to uncontrolled metallurgical sorting or melting processes.

Many secondary smelters’ process improvements in this country have come as a result of public demands, class action suits and regulatory pressures, leaving only large well-funded Lead (Pb) smelters in operation today. However, substantial industry strides have been made to improve lead acid recycling statistics and promote states’ participation in lead acid battery collection and the treatment process.

Here’s a general summary of lead/acid battery recycling state rules in effects:

Summary (Total = 42 States and 1 City) • 37 States and 1 City with the Battery Counsel International Model (with and without deposit); no landfill• 7 States with a $5 deposit in lieu of trade-in requirement; and • 2 States with a $10 deposit in lieu of trade-in requirement. •5 States with a ban on municipal solid waste disposal (landfills and/or incinerators).

I especially applaud the new lead acid battery “recycle material” percentage of 60-80%.

Connecting lead/acid battery and end-of-life electronics recycling, it would seem electronic OEMs still have a way to go to capture e-waste components, as battery manufacturers have, and recycle the legacy material into new electronics. I must admit, the electronic lead/acid battery recycling rates and infrastructure are impressive. But I hope it doesn’t take another 30 years for electronic recycling to reach a maturity level equal to lead/acid batteries recycling.

Looking at the big e-waste picture, we may have a ways to go. Historically, PCs and communications gear have sustainable recycling attributes. The components and precious metal values currently offset costs of domestic preprocessing and reclaiming. In addition, high-value e-waste concentrates have the support of precious metal smelters, having been around for some time now.

But the Achilles heel of our potential national e-waste collection infrastructure, next to CRT processing, is “low value” (or unsubsidized) e-waste categories, which actually comprise the majority of potential e-waste volumes and/or toxin releases. At present, our country is trying to address the situation with CRTs and cell phones, with some states subsidizing that activity through consumer levies and surcharges. But for far too long, we have continued to ignore growing “low value” e-waste categories and account for e-waste volumes, those positioned for export and/or landfills.

Unfortunately, domestic low-value e-waste is not sustainable under “manual dismantling” operations, without subsidies. Broken-down e-waste constituent value cannot offset domestic labor and compliance infrastructure. One example: I had a person dismantle an oversized copier once. The study revealed it took $45 to realize $20 in metal and plastic returns. This is the main reason sustainable “low value” electronic processing doesn’t work in America.

Compounding the e-waste problem, there’s a need for U.S. e-waste businesses to invest in and demonstrate low-value e-waste process capability, not to just invest in subsidized and/or high-value e-waste manual dismantling operations. It seems U.S. e-waste recycling industry capacity is going in this direction.

But what’s extremely important and sorely lacking is the focus on clean, low-value automated e-waste technologies at high volumes, especially process printers, copiers and similar types of uncovered electronics devices and into “U.S. smelter grade” metals and recyclable plastics. This will likely leave ceramics and fiberglass as solid hazardous waste. However, by-products should be managed in accordance with the solid waste rules and be completely transparent.

New smelter furnace burner technology is another key to lowering pollution. The newer furnace burners do not use the nitrogen portion of our air for combustion, essentially eliminating nitrogen oxides from the gas (80% volume reduction) stream during burner operation and metal melting.

In the final analysis, the use of our existing domestic metal smelters is part of the overall e-waste solution. The new low value e-waste technology must produce metal products, suitable for our existing domestic smelters, not low-value copper base chopped circuit cards. The process must produce metal streams pure enough to guarantee a smelter metallurgical chemistry. In the long run, it’s the greenest path, as it maintains e-waste process control within our borders.

Once we acknowledge as an industry our metal-processing capability and how it can be used to solve our e-waste problems, we as a nation will be closer to solving a domestic low-value e-waste-to-metal (toxins) resource recycling challenge. But—and this is important—it must be smelter- grade scrap metal only.

As I reflect on the exciting times of producing pure and alloyed lead (Pb) products from truckloads of spent lead/acid batteries, I realize there’s one fundamental difference between now and then. Before 1990, lead acid batteries were mostly manufactured in the U.S. That has since changed: many U.S.-based lead/acid battery manufacturing plants have shut down. The remaining OEM battery manufacturing in the U.S. has strong ties to local lead smelters, and in some cases actually owns them.

So I have to ask: since electronics for the most part are no longer manufactured in America, is there really any national incentive to build a low-value e-waste collection and pre-processing infrastructure, similar to that used for recycling batteries? It all boils down to advanced e-waste pre-processing in America, and rendering U.S. smelter-grade metal products from end-of-life e-waste. As always, industry know-how and leadership will solve the problems arising from its own poisons.