Metals Alert

Federal law needed to boost US e-waste recycling and metals recovery: Intercon New York (Platts)

3Apr2012/407 pm EDT/2007 GMT

Federal legislation governing the rules and standards of electronic waste recycling in all 50 states of the US would be beneficial to the industry and increase the scope for recovering commodities such as ferrous, nonferrous and precious metals, the CEO of one of the country's largest recyclers of e-waste said Tuesday. In an interview, Brian Brundage, CEO of Chicago-based Intercon Solutions, said he believed such legislation was likely. "We believe the federal government is going to come in and put a blanket piece of legislation at some point, although it's hard to say when," he said. Brundage said that with different legislation in different states, people cross state borders and dump waste in landfills, rather than recycle it to get around rules in their own state. "The problem with the different state rules is that people will go to the states that are more cost-effective for them," he said. Commenting on the constitutionality of federal legislation, Brundage said: "There's always somebody who will tout it's unconstitutional when it doesn't work for them. But the more you get involved... the more you realize that, ultimately, it's better for everybody." Apart from enacting regulations, he conceded that enforcing them was also tough. While praising the efforts of European legislators on electronic waste recycling, he acknowledged that regulations there have been hard to enforce. "Their directives are tremendously great, but how much has been implemented is a different story," he said in reference to recent cases of container loads of electronic waste illegally exported from Europe to be dumped in various developing countries in Africa. He said that recycling has reached a point in the US where there "is much greater awareness in government, in business and among consumers." But he said there was still an attitude of people hoarding electronic waste and storing it in their basements, or in the case of businesses, in warehouses, because they are not sure what to do with it. "A lot of people don't understand how easy is to recycle something by calling a recycler. It's true of businesses and households. On the corporate side, they've put it in a big warehouse, taking up space that they're paying a lot of money for. They could utilize it for something more useful and commercial," Brundage said. E-WASTE ACCOUNTS FOR 2-5% OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE FLOW According to the company's website, electronic waste constitutes between 2% and 5% of the US municipal solid waste stream and is growing rapidly. The website says European studies estimate the volume of electronic waste is rising by 3-5%/year. It also quotes US Environmental Protection Agency data from 1997, showing that more than 3 million mt of electronic waste ended up in US landfills. Plastics are the main commodity groups that Intercon recovers from electronic waste. After that, ferrous metals form the next largest commodity grouping. Intercon operates several recycling centers in the US and has operations in Canada and Europe. All the centers ship their sorted material to Intercon's Chicago facility for further processing. In terms of volume, Brundage said: "We send about three truckloads/day of ferrous material to a local foundry." A full truckload amounts to 40,000 lb of material. In a day that equates to 53.6 lt, or 54.43 mt. In a full year, based on a five-day week, Intercon recovers enough ferrous material from electronic waste to fill a Handysize dry bulk carrier, although filling ships for export is not the company's priority. "We try to deal with domestic resources first. If there's a local... foundry that can use our material, then we're trying to do that to simulate the economy. If we can't find the market [domestically], then we'll look elsewhere," said Brundage. He said that the local foundry, which he declined to name, used the recovered ferrous material in the making of rebar for the construction industry. He said that "a lot of the rebar" in the new Trump Tower in Chicago was produced from ferrous material recovered from electronic waste recycling. Aluminum is the next largest volume metal recovered from electronic waste, according to Brundage, because hard drives are made of aluminum. Intercon generates a truckload of recovered aluminum a week from its plant in Chicago. The company takes a little over a week to generate a full truckload of recovered copper. The next largest volume of metal handled by Intercon is lead, which is mostly recovered from cathode ray tube monitors and television sets. Brundage did not put a volume on the lead it recovers. Despite the abandonment of cathoderay technology, Brundage believes his company will still be
recycling them for several years to come.

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