January/February 1995
The boom in personal computing and rapid advances in computer technology have combined to produce an increasingly visible side effect of the computer age: millions of “old” computers. Current recovery efforts are limited, but the future is likely to boost recycling.
By Jeff Borsecnik
Jeff Borsecnik is an associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling
Computer technology seems to be evolving at lightning speed these days—the most advanced equipment available one week seems out of date by the next. That puts a lot of computer users into a constant race to upgrade their equipment before it becomes obsolete.
In the rush to trade up to speedier machines, what’s happening to all the old computers pushed aside? “The majority are landfilled or sitting in basements, attics, the corner of the office,” says John Matthews, marketing director of Envirocycle Inc. (Hallstead, Pa.), an electronic equipment recycler. Unlike mainframes, production-reject circuit boards, and machines retired en masse in computer changeovers at large companies—which are generally recovered in some way—computers from small businesses and homes are rarely submitted for recycling he explains.
In fact, estimates Michael Filandro, president of Texas Recycling & Refining Inc. (Houston), an electronic scrap processor that handles everything from plastics to precious metals, "at this point, probably less than 50 percent of the volume of retired computers gets recycled," though most probably have some parts salvaged.
That's significant when you consider that the number of computers taken out of service every year is big and getting bigger, fast. According to a Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh) study, if the present rate of discarding continues, more computers will have been dumped—150 million—than will be in use by 2005.
Then again, if regulators have their way, disposal may not be an option by then. A number of localities are aiming to ban computers from landfills over fears that lead or other components will leach into groundwater. And the door has slammed even tighter on incineration: Last year, the US . Supreme Court ruled that ash from municipal solid waste incinerators is not exempt from hazardous waste regulations if it fails the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure, prompting many incinerators to reject items like computer hardware.
Computer Commodities: Slim Picking and Several Pits
While these factors may not yet have inspired a rush of recycling companies to target the computer market, there are a variety of firms already in the business.
Those that repair and resell or donate old machines could be considered the first level of computer "recyclers," and they typically claim the highest value for their final product.
In the next tier of computer recovery are companies that salvage components from discarded computers, including certain chips "depopulated" from circuit boards. These may be returned to the manufacturer for reuse, stocked as replacement parts, or even refurbished and sold into lower-end markets, like computerized toys.
Not many of the salvaged chips return to their original use, however, according to Filandro. One reason for this is that computer manufacturers are often wary of the secondary market for chips and other components. They don't want substandard versions of their equipment out on the market to compete with their new computers or sully their reputations, so they often require scrap processors to whom they sell their scrap to destroy these parts. The biggest exception, Filandro notes, is reuse by the computer maker of chips from new boards that failed for reasons like poor gold plating.
Beyond these salvage and repair strategies are those firms that actually process and recycle scrap computers, which contain quite the mix of materials, including steel, aluminum, copper, lead, precious metals, glass, and plastics.
But how feasible is it to recover these materials? "The recyclability in some ways is going down, in some ways up," says Matthews. "There's less gold-bearing material in computers today, and that removes a lot of incentive to collect them. Overall, the materials being used are more recyclable, but material content with high value is going down."
Technically, adds Filandro, all the components are recyclable, but some are "recyclable at cost," he says, listing lithium batteries, mercury switches, and the cathode ray tubes (CRTs) of monitors. On the bright side of this, he points out, mercury switches are not commonly used in today's small computers, and lithium batteries are being replaced by nickel-cadmium units, which are said to be easier to recycle. CRTs, on the other hand, remain ubiquitous and difficult to handle.
Lead Raises Its Head
One big reason for CRTs' recycling woes is the presence of lead in them, which potentially relegates CRTs to the "hazardous waste" category, thereby lowering the incentives to process them. Printed circuit boards face similar problems because of their lead content. In fact, lead probably causes the most technical problems for computer recycling.
CRTs contain a substantial amount of lead-2 to 3 pounds, or about one-fifth the weight of the glass, according to Matthews. The lead is not easily separated from the glass, and since few new products call for leaded glass, recycling this material is difficult.
Until recently, CRTs were disposed of as waste, but processes to recycle them have since been developed. For example, Envirocycle, in cooperation with Corning Asahi Glass (State College, Pa.), has figured out how to "demanufacture" CRTs into clean cullet by removing labels, adhesives, and coatings, and currently recycles more than 5million pounds of CRT glass a year, "keeping over 1 million pounds of lead out of landfills," notes Matthews.
The market for this CRT cullet may eventually max out, Matthews says, but this is years down the road. As one potential "downcycling" application, Noranda Metallurgy (Toronto), which operates a large copper smelter and receives some monitors in low-grade electronic scrap, is considering a program to ship CRT glass to a lead smelter it operates that can recover the lead and use the silica as a flux substitute to help in separating off slag.
As for printed circuit boards, tin-lead solder is the culprit behind its lead problems. Though its presence is tiny by volume, the lead prevents most disposal of even low-value boards, which typically end up at a copper smelter, perhaps after having been relieved of higher-value components. In North America, a very large portion of such electronic scrap, especially material with low precious metal content, reportedly ends up at Noranda, one of a few smelters in the world said to be capable of processing this material into refined copper, precious metals, and lead (which is recovered from baghouse dust), according to Scott Roos, the company's vice president of sales for recyclable materials. Some electronic scrap from North America also heads to smelters in Europe , while another portion reportedly goes to Asia , especially China , where low labor costs allow finer manual separation.
Plastic Problems
In addition to the "hazardous" leaded computer components are a number of others that might be considered "hassle" components, such as adhesives, labels, mechanically fastened brackets, paint, and the metallic coatings used as electromagnetic shields—all of which can complicate processing. Most of these troubles are associated with computer plastics and the challenge of trying to efficiently remove them from scrap plastic parts.
Even without these contaminants, however, computer plastic recycling faces other obstacles. For one, there is a troubling variety of resin types used in computers. Older machines, in particular, were often built with "lots" of different plastics, says Dewey Pitts, advisory engineer for EM'S Engineering Center for Environmentally Conscious Products (Research Triangle Park, N.C.). "When you take them apart now, you end up with many small piles of assorted plastics," he says.
A typical computer housing, for example, might contain acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, high-impact polystyrene, polycarbonate, polystyrene, and polyvinyl chloride, according to Michael Biddle, principal of Michael Biddle and Associates (Berkeley, Calif.), which researches the recycling of durable plastic products.
With such an assortment of resins, the big issues for recyclers are how to efficiently sort the scrap and compile large enough volumes of individual plastic types to maximize the value of the material. And an offshoot of those problems is the fact that the scrap is of relatively low value but handling it can be both capital-and labor-intensive. Identifying and sorting mixed plastics from electronic equipment requires a "vast" amount of time—it’s "very, very involved and has a very long learning curve," says Matthews, who notes that Envirocycle is able to identify about half of its incoming scrap plastics by stamps on the material, and tries to use information gleaned from manufacturers to classify the rest. The company's investigative efforts only take it so far, says Matthews, who notes, pointing out that while it can sell about 85 percent of the plastics, the remaining 15 percent is unidentifiable or contaminated material, including packaging.
While there is movement toward reduction in the number of plastics used by the computer industry's original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), with most favoring only a few types, recyclers today may have to handle products ranging from 20 years old to brand new, says Matthews. "We generate at least 10 kinds of plastics, and that doesn't even get into color," he says. And even with growing standardization of resins, adds Pitts, "there will always be some other plastics inside computers, on components the OEMs purchase elsewhere—connectors, cables—in small amounts." Furthermore, many believe that regardless of whether each manufacturer sticks to a couple of plastics, different manufacturers won't necessarily use the same resin to produce similar parts.
Even their variety of sizes and shapes makes the actual processing of plastics from durable products like computers much more difficult than the soft drink and milk bottle success stories of plastic recycling.
But the ultimate limit on computer plastic recycling potential is the lack of markets. Biddle reports that he is aware of only one "closed loop" operation turning scrap plastics from computers into new computer parts—a U.K. IBM venture with resin supplier Hydro Geon and a recycler called Mann Organization that uses reground polyvinyl chloride from old computer housings and keyboards to make new keyboards and monitor bases.
Who's Got the Scrap?
Large companies retiring their computer fleets and computer service centers sometimes work directly with processors to get their old machines and parts recycled. But most computer scrap that is recycled today comes from OEMs, which primarily supply production-generated scrap and new returned machines and failed parts, though they are also a good source of whole used computers.
"Computer companies do lots of lease deals," explains Matthew. “When they have to pull that equipment back, say at the end of five years, the machines are virtually worthless because of rapid technology turnover”—so they get scrapped. Retired computers are also sometimes forced on the manufacturers by large customers with enough purchasing power to require take-backs.
The desire to cut waste and avoid long-term liability for materials thrown away is what attracts scrap computer suppliers to companies like Envirocycle and Texas Recycling & Refining. "We take the headache off their hands," says Filandro. “They get money for their 'garbage' and get peace of mind. It's not going to sit in a landfill and won't come back and bite them in five years.”
There is also growing pressure on OEMs to ensure that their products are recycled when retired. "The biggest fear of the electronics companies is that manufacturer take-back requirements will be legislated," says Matthews. "Some states already have battery take-back mandates and they're piecemeal, haphazard, and very costly. The manufacturers don't want to see another part of their business regulated."
The computer makers are keeping an eye on Germany 's take-back program, which makes manufacturers responsible for ensuring that their products are recycled at the end of their useful lives. This program, which initially targeted only packaging, was scheduled to expand to electronic goods this year, but this has been postponed. Says Filandro: "They don't have a clue on how they are going to handle it."
Pressure to widen collection could come in more subtle ways than legislated requirements, such as a government-sanctioned "ecolabeling" program in which manufacturers are granted the right to use a standard label that touts the environmental benefits of their products in exchange for their promise to recover those items when consumers discard them, says J. Ray Kirby, manager of the IBM Engineering Center for Environmentally Conscious Products. He describes such a deal: "If you put the ecolabel on a product, you would be required to take the product back at the end of its life. That might be the driving force in the United States ."
Help Over the Hurdles
The potential for computer recycling mandates is also pushing computer manufacturers and their suppliers to make computers more recyclable by taking steps like limiting the number of plastics in a particular piece of equipment, cutting the use of coatings, and identity-stamping plastic parts. In addition, some are studying alternatives to tin-lead solder.
The computer manufacturing industry is also working with resin makers in an American Plastics Council (Washington, D.C.) project focusing on recycling technology for equipment already out in the field. Goals include development of appropriate technology for scrap plastic size reduction and elimination of contaminants, automatic and portable plastic identification, and paint and coating removal.
The computer makers are examining collection options, too. "There's no [collection] legislation on the burner right now, but it makes good business sense to prepare for whatever could happen and show the public that industry is trying to do a good job on recycling," says IBM 's Kirby.
AT&T, for example, is "working on a worldwide program for the reverse distribution of the computers we sell," says John Ciccarelli, a senior environmental engineer with the company based in Basking Ridge, N.J. "The ultimate strategy is to have a worldwide network of AT&T-approved recycling companies that will safely and legally recycle our computers."
Envirocycle also has a collection program in mind, reports Matthews. "If it works out, we may see very rapid development of a return program for these materials. If it's not successful and no one else has other alternatives, then it will only happen with take-back legislation."
New Business Opportunities
Exactly how and when isn't clear, but it's a good bet that large-scale computer collection for recycling is coming. And the number of computers that will be targeted is "staggering," says Ronald Rosenson, president of Behr Precious Metals Inc. (Rockford, Ill.), who expects to see manufacturer-led collection programs within five years.
Someone is going to have to recycle those computers, and, by and large, it isn't going to be the OEMs, says Filandro. "These folks have been in business for years with one focus: make, make, make ... Handling scrap is very time consuming, and it changes fast, so you've always got to find a new way to do things. It would cost them a fortune to do that at their average wage of maybe $60 an hour." Thus, Filandro, whose company has tripled in size in the last year, sees new opportunities for other companies in the computer recycling business. "Computers are 'outdating' very fast and there's a very limited number of people out there doing much," he says.
Rosenson cautions those firms that decide to target this niche that while it can be profitable, they aren't likely to make money on the scrap itself. "They're going to have to charge for it," he says, suggesting a situation something like this might develop: The OEM will buy back its computers by giving the user a credit toward a new machine, then turn the scrapped unit and a processing fee over to the recycler (and recoup the cost in the price of new computers).
The recycler filling this niche is likely to be called on to provide services beyond simply processing scrap, such as helping set up systems to manage scrap internally, component reclamation, warehousing of parts, and perhaps destruction of equipment along with detailed reporting, including part and serial numbers and reconciliation of outgoing materials against incoming weights and piece counts.
The Hazardous Waste Phantom
The bogeyman that most in the business of computer recycling fear upsetting these opportunities is the regulatory one. In handling electronic scrap, even high value material, "you always run the risk of it being classified as waste," says Noranda's Roos, "and that pressure is increasing all the time."
The key—it's a standard anthem for scrap processors these days—is what's a "hazardous waste"? When does a circuit board become a waste? When removed from a computer, when shredded or ground up? Are used monitors a hazardous waste? How about leaded cullet from demanufactured CRTs? Most of these questions have mixed or missing answers. For example, addressing the issue of shipment of leaded glass from CRTs, Matthews says some states consider the broken glass hazardous waste, and some don't. At the Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, "there have been several regional interpretations that it's most likely not hazardous waste, but it's not clear-cut," he says.
Matthews worries that "the economics would fall apart" if the hazardous waste moniker is applied to computer scrap collected for recycling. "If we are treated like manufacturers, we have no problems—for example if printed circuit boards are not regulated as hazardous material, only the waste generated by processing them is. But if they start regulating and permitting and establishing excessive control over material rather than waste, that's when we will have a real problem."
The boom in personal computing and rapid advances in computer technology have combined to produce an increasingly visible side effect of the computer age: millions of “old” computers. Current recovery efforts are limited, but the future is likely to boost recycling.