What do you do with your e-waste?
We still see electronic material being piled up in landfills even after all the news reporting about the damages created by not properly disposing of old or defective electronic material.
This doesn’t make sense since a lot of the parts: steel, glass, copper, aluminum, plastics and precious metals – can be recycled and be used once again to do new merchandise. Computers are being replaced faster than ever before, cell phones break frequently so electronic products are now looked at as a disposable commodity rather than a material possession. The average turn-around for upgrading a personal computer is shorter than 2 years in North America.
We don’t always really need the material; it’s not all about necessity but normaly just because we just like getting newer stuff, with the latest gadgets and blinks. Electronic has become a fashion article that will not be needed as soon as something that looks newer will hit the market.
Are there motives for people not recycling their e-waste?
Much noise has been made by associations like Greenpeace concerning the poor practices of some recycling companies outsourcing their recycling to Asian and African countries or simply sending waste towards these countries. The message from Greenpeace has chocked a lot of people and I believe the result has not been quite what was to be expected. The association showed to the whole world how large quantities of toxic equipment ends being wrongly recycled in Asia. We can then deduct that some people and companies are keeping their equipment, not sure if it will ends in a correct place.
It is not a good idea to put our head under the sand and not recycling our e-waste at all. Some associations such as CARI-ACIR are there to verify that their members are following some rules like avoiding exports to third world countries and not sending electronic scrap to landfills. Every members are audited and customers can be insured of a proper recycling of their equipment when they ship to one of their member.
Some people are still thinking that they should get money returned for their e-waste. Other people believe that a company could pay its employees to pick up the electronic material, while properly sorting and separating it, unscrew all the plastic pieces from the metal parts and afford to pay North American salaries without charging a penny to their customer. People have to understand that recycling obsolete computers only pay a few cents per kg of material. Recyclers stating that they do free pickups and free recycling are clearly doing something improper if they are not getting paid directly by the authorities to do it. PC Recycle, a company started in 1994 still has to fight against false recyclers in the field with no physical place, only running their business from a cellular phone and a pickup truck. Those “recyclers†are salvaging what they can put back on the market and the remaining is most probably sent to landfills even though another story is told to the clients. At least, no one can verify because these amateurs are obviously not accredited by any organization.
So before taking someone to recycle your electronic, look around and find who their competitors are. If they offer you a free recycling, it should certainly raise a red flag. You have to make sure that the company taking your recycling is accredited by an association. Make sure also that your recycler would accept to show you his place: an appropriate recycling will be from a company that is transparent in its activities.
Jason Mailley
PC Recycle
