This is from today's National Post in Canada and maybe something you want to look into. Tremendous upside.
MINING UNWANTED ELECTRONICS 1Recycler aims to find new life for 100% of material
Imagine a mining operation where the motherlode, rather than buried in earth and rock, ran through virtually every home and office in the developed world.
Alfred Hambsch, founder of Global Electric Electronic Processing, says the e-waste recycling business is a trend that is about to explode into an industry.
Overwhelming odds are that at this moment there is something in your immediate vicinity containing valuable metals. And when you’re finished with it, Alfred Hambsch would like it, please.
The Barrie, Ont.-based company he founded, Global Electric Electronic Processing, is at the forefront of recycling electronic waste, separating the components of unwanted cellphones, computers and laptops, extracting the hidden steel, aluminum, copper, silver and gold and reselling the commodities. He calls it “above-ground mining.”
GEEP is far from the biggest global player recycling obsolete electronics, but it does pride itself on being one of the most progressive. Mr. Hambsch’s goal is to find a new life for 100% of the material GEEP’s plants take in. The company so far has been able to push that figure to about 95%, in part due to a state-of-the-art process that turns recovered plastic into diesel fuel.
By the end of this year, after more than two years of research and development, GEEP expects to be able to achieve self-sufficiency and use that high-quality diesel to run its turbines and generators. Any surplus electricity can be sold back into the grid.
GEEP’s commitment to innovative recycling has it wellpositioned to capitalize on a business opportunity that will grow exponentially as more and more jurisdictions in North America recognize electronic waste as a growing environmental problem, Mr. Hambsch says.
Environment Canada estimated in 2003 that 140,000 tonnes of electronic waste is sent to landfills each year in Canada. In the United States, that figure has been pegged at around two million tonnes, the vast majority of which is sent to landfills. From a regulatory standpoint, the problem is not merely one of volume, but also concerns the toxic heavy metals — lead, cadmium and mercury — found in electronics.
Also, what hasn’t been put in the garbage stream has typically been exported to China or countries in Africa, where it is taken apart with little regard for environmental or human safety.
Regulators in Canada and the United States are now heeding the calls of environmentalists and mandating the proper recycling of scrap electronics, paving the way for innovative clean tech outfits, says Tom Rand, director at private equity fund VCi Green Funds and the practice lead in the Cleantech and Physical Sciences department in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District.
“It’s brilliant. It has to happen,” Mr. Rand says. “That’s what sustainability means, that we don’t keep needing new stuff to make new stuff, because it’s finite.”
He explains the few potential revenue streams available to electronic waste handlers. Some rely on fees to process the waste, others on reselling of salvaged commodities and others on government-funded recycling programs.
GEEP relies on all three revenue streams, Mr. Hambsch says. That way the company can best take advantage of the impending boom in electronics processing.
“I think this trend will explode in the next few years, and will generate a brand new industry in North America. It’s very exciting.”
He first delved into commercial recycling when he bought a Barrie scrapyard in 1984. Eventually, he realized he could not achieve the economies of scale to become a big enough player in ferrous recycling.
“We diverted ourselves into a different industry, which didn’t exist at the time,” he says. “The existing recycling industry, like the big automobile shredders, they are not suitable to segregate those electronic items. So we had to come up with a brand new technology.”
He learned what he could from recyclers in Europe, where the industry took hold much sooner than in North America.
At the time, none of them had the full “closed loop” process that could disassemble any type of junk electronic and recycle all of its components. “With our technology, we can handle any electronics in any way we receive it,” he says.
Not all the equipment GEEP receives is obsolete, however. When a company replaces a large number of computers at the end of a lease term, it may contract GEEP to handle the old models. In those circumstances, 85% of the equipment may be reusable, Mr. Hambsch says.
To assure their clients sensitive or proprietary information will be expunged, GEEP developed proprietary software to wipe hard drives clean. It then refurbishes the salvageable equipment and resells it on the open market.
The company recently won a contract with Samsung, which offers a printer tradein program for its customers, giving cash back on old models. Those old printers end up at a GEEP plant for either refurbishment or processing.
“If the material is young enough and in good shape, we give it a second life. It makes economical sense and it’s also green,” he says.
However, if a component is at the end of its life, it will be segregated.
Ferrous metals, making up about half of most electronics, can be used to make new steel. Aluminum can be melted and cast into ingots. Copper can be turned into cathodes. And precious metals can be put into silver and gold bullion.
Last year, GEEP processed almost 100 million pounds of equipment at its plants in Barrie, Edmonton, Detroit, Dallas, Raleigh and Costa Rica. It took in revenue of more than $100-million, down from more than $150-million a year before the financial crisis, Mr. Hambsch says.
And GEEP is planning to substantially build on its capacity in the near future.
Last year, Ontario joined British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia in legislating a program to divert electronic waste, an initiative that in five years is expected annually to divert 85,000 tonnes of waste electronics away from landfills and to companies such as GEEP.
Last month, the company announced it had won a contract to handle the federal government’s electronic waste from its offices across the country.
However, the true potential for GEEP lies in all the electronics that still end up in garbage heaps.
As an illustration of the wasted “mining” opportunity in treating treasure like trash, it takes 200 tonnes of copper ore to produce one tonne of copper, Mr. Hambsch says.
“I can’t understand why we throw this stuff away into landfill sites, when it takes only 14 tonnes of e-waste to make one tonne of copper.” |
