SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007
What’s the best way to get used electronics into the recycling stream? Take your pick.
BY ANN C. LOGUE
Attics, basements, and garages. That’s where 180 million pieces of used electronic equipment purchased between 1980 and 2004 are hiding, according to a draft U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report released in April. Purchasers discarded—but did not dispose of—another 460 million electronic products in 2005 alone, by passing them along to another user or adding them to the storage closet, the study found.
The stockpile of used household electronics is an opportunity for recyclers, who know these devices have value both in the reuse market and for the commodities they contain. But the EPA study estimates that only 15 percent to 20 percent of end-of-life electronics get recycled. That proportion has remained nearly constant as the number of end-of-life electronic devices has more than doubled, from 159 million in 1999 to 347 million in 2005. How to reach the vast majority of stockpiled household electronics is the question on the minds of recyclers, lawmakers, environmentalists, manufacturers, and others interested in increasing electronics collection
for recycling.
Best practices
The “best” collection method depends on a variety of factors. First, does the recycler hope to resell the devices on the secondary electronics market or demanufacture or shred them for commodity recovery? Some collection methods are better than others for minimizing damage, which could improve the reuse potential. Household electronics that get recycled tend to be older than those collected from businesses, thus their reuse potential already is lower. The EPA report cited a one-year study of household electronics collected in a 2004-2005 Florida project that found that the average age of a recycled desktop computer was 12 years; a laptop, six years; and a CRT monitor or printer, nine years.
Second, what geographic area is targeted for collection? A strategy that works in an urban environment might not be successful in a rural area. In the same vein, some states and municipalities have laws and regulations intended to encourage electronics recycling. They may ban CRTs, televisions, or other electronic devices from landfills—the EPA report found some evidence of greater CRT recovery in jurisdictions with landfill bans. And states including Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, and Washington have implemented producer-responsibility laws that require manufacturers to create systems for recycling their products and/or cover some of the cost of recycling electronics.
Third, what are the costs of storage, staffing, and transportation, and who bears them? Recyclers have the opportunity to contract with or partner with local governments, nonprofits, and electronics manufacturers and retailers interested in (or required to fund) electronics recycling, potentially offsetting some of those costs. With those three questions in mind, here’s a look at the pros and cons of five collection strategies: drop-off locations, collection events, curbside pickup, manufacturer takebacks, and corporate collections.
Drop-off locations
Creating permanent drop-off locations is one of the most common ways to collect electronics. Some recyclers accept drop-offs at their facilities. Municipal governments also operate drop-off locations, especially where they have landfill bans. In Maine, which has such a ban, “the state has set up a shared-responsibility model for the recycling of these items,” says Sam Morris, a planner in the state’s recycling and waste management program. Residents drop off their electronics at municipal transfer stations or recycling centers, where consolidators pick them up for demanufacturing or sale to recycling facilities. Each municipality can charge a fee to the consumer at the drop-off site—usually less than $5—to cover transportation or site operations. The consolidators bill manufacturers for all costs of recycling CRTs from residential sources.
Staples, a nationwide office-supply chain, began in May to accept used computers, monitors, and other electronics at all of its locations during regular hours. “It’s still early in the program, so we don’t have numbers,” says Mike Black, a company spokesperson. “In talking to store managers, there’s a lot of interest because there aren’t a lot of options for small businesses” to recycle their electronics. The company charges $10 to accept large items such as computers and monitors; it accepts peripherals and small items such as cell phones, pagers, and digital cameras without charge. “This is cheaper than many other [recycling opportunities] out there,” Black says, “but the price is less a factor than the ease and convenience.” Staples has hired Amandi Services (Vestal, N.Y.) to process the items.
On Sept. 15, Sony Electronics (New York) launched what might be the first nationwide, manufacturer-sponsored drop-off program. Customers can recycle used Sony products free at 75 Waste Management Recycle America facilities across the country. The facilities will accept other consumer electronics but might charge a fee for them, Sony reports. The program will expand to at least 150 drop-off locations in the next year.
Collection events
Many municipal governments, recyclers, retailers, and other groups hold special, limited-duration events where people can drop off electronics for recycling. The success of such events can depend on their location and duration, the amount of publicity, whether there’s a charge, and whether they’re held in conjunction with events such as household hazardous waste collections.
In an extensive 1999-2000 study of electronics collection in Minnesota, collection events at retail stores were by far the most successful strategy, garnering both the most participants and the lowest average cost per participant. More than one-third of those who recycled electronics during the study dropped them off at one of the three participating electronics retailers. Surveys of participants indicated they had a better impression of the retailers hosting the events, though one retailer’s internal survey indicated that the events negatively affected customer satisfaction at the time, most likely because the staff was busier.
San Diego-based Green Earth Recycling works with retailers to collect electronics at their stores. Green Earth holds weekend recycling events at kiosks in the parking lots of Circuit City, Best Buy, and CompUSA electronics stores in California. At the most recent events at Circuit City, the company has given recycling patrons $10 gift cards. “The logic of our program is fairly obvious,” says Green Earth CEO Josh Turchin. “Consumers want it [and] the retailer is looking to attract additional consumers.” The primary challenge, he says, is convincing retailers to market the events sufficiently.
The company refurbishes most of the computers it collects at a couple of facilities in Mexico for resale in Mexico, Central America, and South America. “Almost everything is usable to somebody,” Turchin says. “Our scale [of usability] slides a little lower than most people’s,” he says, because his customers in less technologically advanced markets don’t consider anything obsolete.
The second-most-successful collection strategy in the Minnesota study was holding electronics-only collection events not hosted by retailers, which attracted 20 percent of the people who recycled electronics during the study. The study found that publicity and staffing were the two most expensive aspects of holding events, and that the more convenient the event’s location, the more successful it was. (Electronics-only events were more successful and less expensive than those that collected electronics along with household hazardous waste.)
Events are not the best solution for everyone, though. Between April 2002 and April 2006, Baltimore County, Md., held one-day collection events each spring and fall that collected a total of 419.5 tons of material, according to Charlie Reighart, the county’s recycling and waste prevention manager. The county then constructed a storage facility and full-time drop-off point in Cockeysville, Md., in the center of the county, that opened in September 2006. In its first nine months of operation, the facility collected 418 tons of material—nearly as much in that short period as the county had collected at the events over the previous five years. The county pays Supreme Computer and Electronic Services (Lakewood, N.J.) to recycle the electronics it collects.
Curbside collections
At first glance, curbside pickup of electronics might seem like the best way to maximize collection. After all, what could be easier than leaving a computer at the end of the driveway? In practice, though, communities that have experimented with curbside programs have found mixed results.
In November 2004, Goodwill Industries of Central Texas partnered with Dell (headquartered in nearby Round Rock, Texas) and the city of Austin on a yearlong electronics recycling pilot program. Goodwill had been accepting electronics at dozens of drop-off locations in Central Texas since 1997; the pilot program gave Austin residents the opportunity to schedule curbside pickup for a $10 charge. “We thought we had come up with the best idea ever, and we discussed what we would do if we had too many pickups” to handle, says Christine Banks, GICT’s vice president of environmental business services. Instead, curbside “was a resounding failure,” she says.
The program received only 33 requests for pickups in the course of the year, and one-third of those directly followed the program’s kickoff, which received extensive media coverage, Banks says. The result was especially surprising considering that before the program began, nearly one-third of residents surveyed expressed an interest in curbside service. The program did succeed in increasing electronics drop-off volume about 30 percent.
Why didn’t curbside pickup work in Austin? Banks has one theory: “We were trying to retrain the public’s behavior. People are used to putting stuff in their car and taking it to Goodwill.” The nonprofit doesn’t pick up other household goods in central Texas, she notes. Data security concerns might have been another barrier, says Rebecca Hays, public information specialist for Austin’s Solid Waste Services. “Just as you wouldn’t throw your credit card receipts directly into the trash, people are concerned about the security of the data on a CPU they leave on a curb,” she says.
Two other regions have had little success with curbside collections. The Minnesota study found that only 4 percent of surveyed participants used the curbside service available in Minneapolis. (The average cost per participant was surprisingly low, however—only higher than collection events at retailers.) And in Massachusetts, which has banned CRTs from landfills, on-demand curbside collection has been less successful than drop-off locations, according to the EPA report. It notes, however, that the need to make an appointment for pickup and the monthly limit on number of pickups per residence might make curbside pickup more of a hassle than it appears.
But don’t write off curbside yet—at least one community is making it work. In Redmond, Wash. (home of Microsoft Corp.), residents who subscribe to the curbside waste collection and recycling service can recycle electronics for no additional charge by calling Waste Management/Sno-King, the city’s contractor, the day before their regular trash collection. The company picks up computers, monitors, televisions up to 21 inches, handheld electronics, and other devices and sends them to Total Reclaim, a Seattle company that demanufactures the items and sorts the materials for recycling. Redmond also holds collection events three times a year but charges participants $15 per TV and $10 for each other item.
In 2006, the city collected about 22 tons of electronic scrap through curbside collection and about 14 tons through the three collection events, according to Jerome Jin from Redmond’s Public Works Department. Jin calls the curbside service “not only convenient but also cost-effective” for customers. He notes, however, that municipal recycling programs might let manufacturers “delay in taking actions to address the proper disposal of their postconsumer products.”
Takeback programs
As Jin’s comment indicates, electronics manufacturers face increasing pressure to ensure their products don’t end up in landfills. Several of them have launched programs to take back their own and sometimes other products for recycling. HP has one of the oldest programs, launched in 1987, which it has steadily expanded over the years. The company’s trade-in program will buy back equipment that it can refurbish and resell. To recycle other computers and peripherals, the company charges $13 to $34 per item (which includes shipping) in all states except Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii. Through February 2008, it offsets those fees by providing coupons for the online purchase of HP equipment. In 2006, HP says it refurbished and resold 2.5 million products and recycled another 82,000 tons of electronics.
Corporate collections
Many electronics recyclers focus primarily on collecting workplace electronics. These companies seek out companies large or small and offer an array of services that might include data destruction, equipment storage, and refurbishment and resale in addition to recycling.
Sunnking (Brockport, N.Y.) processes electronics for several major corporations. It shreds end-of-life products, including warranty returns and secure hard-drive shredding; wipes hard drives for resale or donation back to the client’s employees; and sells usable items online or in the company’s Computers Etc. retail store. Sunnking’s employees pull out for resale computers and peripherals of recent vintage as well as equipment that might interest collectors or those who maintain legacy IT systems. “We’re always surprised,” says Sunnking president Duane Beckett. “A piece that we think will go for $1 will go for $1,000.”
Demand for the company’s services is growing, but slowly, Beckett says. “A lot of companies are still unaware of what they can do with this material,” he says. “A lot of them are still landfilling it. We tell them what we do, and they think it’s a brilliant idea that we just created.”
Despite its corporate focus, Sunnking occasionally holds collection events with local municipalities, and it accepts household electronics at its facility by appointment. (It charges $5 for computer monitors and $10 for televisions.) Beckett says that despite the typically lower value of the items the company receives through these avenues, it’s good for public relations.
The Challenges of Donation
Many schools and nonprofits in the United States and around the world are starving for technology. So, consumers wonder, why is it so hard to find a charity that accepts and reuses old computers? The short answer is that many household computers are too old or too fragile.
Technology changes so rapidly that systems more than a few years old can’t run more recent operating systems and other software. In the United States, the National Cristina Foundation (www.cristina.org), a nonprofit that major computer manufacturers support, matches used computers with schools and nonprofits that need them for training the disabled, at-risk children, and the economically disadvantaged in the donor’s community. The foundation currently accepts Pentium II or newer PCs (or Power Mac or newer Macintosh computers); monitors, keyboards, and mice; software accompanied by license agreements; as well as certain peripherals and other electronic equipment. InterConnection, a Seattle-based nonprofit, refurbishes computers and donates them to community members who complete computer training or sells them at a low cost to international nonprofits. It accepts for reuse working Pentium III and newer desktop PCs, Pentium II and newer laptops, monitors made no later than 2000, and cell phones. It charges a fee to accept and recycle older or nonfunctioning technology.
International aid groups face a different challenge: Many electronics can’t stand up to the conditions in the areas that need them the most. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has set up a clearinghouse of information to help technology companies and nongovernmental organizations offer effective technological aid to developing countries. Because of dust, heat, and uneven electrical currents, a computer in a less-developed country has only about three years of useful life, says Armelle Arrou, a project officer in UNESCO’s information society division (Paris). Further, she says, there’s disagreement about how best to disseminate technology in the developing world. Some NGOs are “half-business, half-philanthropy,” she says, and debates over such matters as whether to use Microsoft, Apple, or Linux operating systems can slow down the process and keep technology away from people who need it.
Arrou sees potential in training workers in developing countries how to refurbish and use secondhand computers and how to recycle end-of-life electronics. “People need to learn how to recycle so that they are not throwing dangerous materials away,” she says.
Ann C. Logue is a writer based in Chicago. Scrap Editor Rachel H. Pollack contributed to this story.
What’s the best way to get used electronics into the recycling stream? Take your pick.