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Switch to digital television to boost e-scrap in Summit
By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Thursday, Feb 21, 2008
BOSTON HEIGHTS: Ted Georger sees an approaching flood of electronic waste.
With the nation's switch to digital broadcasts in 2009, television sets that receive only an analog signal will be on their way to becoming obsolete.
Eventually, those older sets will be discarded, and that will significantly boost the volume of and increase the environmental threat from such waste, which is known as e-scrap.
''It will be a nightmare for recyclers,'' said Georger, who owns and operates E-Waste LLC, a Summit County company that tears apart electronic equipment in order to recycle the glass, metals, copper wiring, plastic and precious metals. '' . . . But it will be doable.''
A fast-growing garbage pile of high-tech electronics waste now exceeds 2 million tons annually in the United States.
Americans own in excess of 2 billion pieces of digital/high-tech devices, including 200 million computers, 150 million cell phones and 200 million television sets.
Each year some 100 million cell phones, 40 million computers and 25 million TV sets are discarded, with most of that waste going into landfills.
E-scrap contains hazardous materials and toxic chemicals. As long as the equipment is intact and properly used, there's no health or environmental threat. But it's a different story when e-scrap is physically broken, improperly discarded
or dumped into landfills.
Computer monitors and TV sets can contain up to 8 pounds of lead and smaller amounts of mercury, cadmium, chromium, beryllium, nickel, zinc and flame retardant. Hundreds of toxic chemicals are used in the manufacture of microprocessors.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as much as 4 percent of municipal solid waste in the United States is now e-scrap, and that waste produces 40 percent of the toxic lead and 70 percent of other heavy metals found in landfills.
The agency estimates that 70 percent of old computers and 80 percent of televisions end up in landfills, despite a growing number of state laws that prohibit dumping e-scrap because of the threat of contaminants leaching into the ground and water.
Four states — California, Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota — have banned lead-laden cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) in computer monitors and televisions from landfills. These parts must go to state-certified recyclers.
Local recycling
Georger's E-Waste company, located at 7600 Olde Eight Road, recycles 10 to 15 tons of e-scrap per day.
The waste comes from companies like Goodyear, from entities like Barberton schools and from individuals dropping off electronics. The Summit County's Household Hazardous Waste Center in Stow shipped Georger nearly 60 tons of computers and 18 tons of televisions last year.
Some firms pay Georger for his recycled material. But he must pay companies to take other processed material.
Georger said his business is labor intensive, and his profit margin is small.
Most electronics recyclers simply sell the goods to brokers who ship the bulk electronics to Asia or Africa for recycling there.
Georger's company ''deconstructs'' the electronics to get to the basic components.
Some of the equipment, perhaps 3 percent to 5 percent, is refurbished and sold, he said.
E-Waste offers its customers three options:
• Dropping off e-waste at no charge except for TVs. (These cost $5 for television sets with screens 27 inches diagonally or smaller and $10 for larger ones.) The material may be refurbished or recycled. Hard drives are wiped clean. (Hard drives will be drilled and destroyed for a $1.35 per drive fee, if desired.) Customers get a copy of a transfer document.
• Dropping off waste at a fee of 5 cents per pound, with TVs extra. Customers get a copy of the transfer document and a report with the breakdown of the components recycled and the weights to meet any federal-state requirements for disposing of electronic gear.
• Dropping off the waste at a fee of 12 cents a pound. The material is scanned and serial numbers are recorded. The material is disassembled and nothing is refurbished. Customers get detailed records certifying that the electronics equipment was recycled.
Georger said the cost of recycling electronics is roughly equal to what a homeowner pays for home garbage service.
He describes his 2-year-old company, with its seven employees, as ''a high-tech service company, not a scrap yard.''
Old tubes biggest item
Forty percent of what E-Waste handles is CRTs, 30 percent is personal computers and another 30 percent is copiers, printers, vacuums, cell phones, radios and other e-waste, he said.
Georger gets his biggest financial return on the precious metals from personal computers.
He admits he loses money on television sets, but he accepts them in order to get other e-scrap from customers.
According to Georger, CRTs are the biggest e-scrap problem.
''They have lost their recyclable value as CRTs have become a thing of the past,'' he said, ''yet we get tons of them.''
An E-Waste worker, wearing heavy protective equipment, wields a hand ax to smash CRTs apart in a glass-walled, pressurized booth.
Georger said it takes four to five minutes to deconstruct one CRT.
That includes removing the electron gun with its precious metals — tiny amounts of gold and platinum — at the rear of the tube. Steel and aluminum bands are removed and recycled.
The funnel glass at the back of a CRT has low levels of lead. The screen glass at the front contains more lead.
A company in Sandusky will take the funnel glass at no charge. It charges Georger 4 cents a pound to get rid of the screen glass.
Some e-waste plastic gets shipped to Little Tykes in Hudson to be made into children's toys. Other plastic gets shipped to China, although Georger said he is investigating using the recycled plastic to build woodlike pallets.
One of Georger's customers is Goodyear. Last year, it recycled nearly 37 tons of computers and related equipment through E-Waste.
Goodyear spokesman Clint Smith said the Akron rubber company has adopted a policy of zero waste going into landfills.
Though companies like Goodyear are under no federal or state mandates to recycle e-waste, there could be liabilities if hazardous waste is improperly handled.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
BOSTON HEIGHTS: Ted Georger sees an approaching flood of electronic waste.
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