2007 Electronics Recycling Supplement - Reuse, Recycle, Rethink

Monitex’ mission statement is: "To divert the maximum amount of materials possible from disposal in landfills through reuse and recycling by providing proper and environmentally safe alternatives. Through our specialized recycling process, [we] provide companies with the highest returns and the lowest costs while maintaining the highest standards of environmental compliance."

Five years ago, we were nothing more than a company exporting monitors overseas, just like everybody else. We saw the trend changing. The industry was taking a turn for the better. People started asking questions: What are you doing with this material? Where is it going? How are you dealing with it?

Seeing that trend, we knew that we had to do something to deliver a better service. The assurance that high-volume generators of these materials were going to need was the assurance that these materials were being dealt with properly.

RETHINKING MONITOR RECYCLING. Our mission, of course, is to divert the maximum amount of materials possible from disposal and landfills through reuse and recycling by providing a proper and environmentally safe alternative. Through our recycling process, we provide companies with the highest returns and the lowest costs while maintaining the high standards of environmental compliance. I will give you an overview of how we do that.

A lot of people always ask, "How can you do that here in the States?" We are not doing things any differently than companies in the international markets. We brought this model from overseas. We brought this model from the Asian companies that are doing this; the only difference is that we are doing it in the United States.

Everybody who is purchasing these materials is not purchasing it just to throw it away. Obviously there is the issue of the materials they can’t use. Seventy percent of materials can be used, but you always have some kind of a fallout—30 percent or 40 percent of the materials can’t be used. How are you going to deal with those?

What we decided was, let’s do that here in the U.S. Let’s allow people to feel it, see it, touch it, and really get comfortable with how this process can be done. It comes with its challenges. We don’t have the labor rates that our competitors do, of course, but, nevertheless, we have demonstrated that it can be done.

We start by creating a relationship, a partnership, with all of our vendors. We approach our customers from that perspective. We are here to provide service, and that service is that level of assurance you need, you want, that these materials are being handled properly. Proper disposal through reuse and recycling is our company’s goal.

GETTING HANDS ON. In any given month, we process 65,000 to 75,000 monitors. We receive the materials into our facility and put them through an inspection process. This is the key to our entire process. This is where we begin the process of sorting our treasure. The inspection process includes a testing criteria that the CRT tests to the specification of a like-new CRT. The manufacturers who are going to be the eventual end user of this product [and who] are going to be manufacturing them into a new product have the same criteria for a used CRT as they would for a new CRT. The testing inspectors are going to look for all that; they’re going to grade it accordingly and pass it on down the line.

The next step in the process is manual demanufacturing. There is no shredding equipment in our process, because what we are doing is trying to get as much reuse out of the materials as possible. Even then, the secondary byproducts out of the materials that cannot be reused are going to be recyclable. In one way or another, materials are going to go into a reuse or recycling stream. There is no trash, essentially, in this product. Every single piece of equipment that we receive goes into one of the streams—reuse or recycling—they are 100 percent treasure in our opinion.

Monitor disassembly is a manual process. They are going to separate all the materials, the plastics, the CRTs. The CRTs go on to a certification process to be tested for functionality. This is another step in the process to deliver the manufacturers the quality that they need to build the end product that they’re looking for. There is a CRT cleaning area as well, again, to deliver the quality that [the manufacturer] needs. Good, tested CRTs are gold for us, essentially, in our treasure. Thus is what we’re after: tested good CRTs that we know our manufacturers are going to be able to use in their assembly line process. It’s no different than them buying brand new CRTs directly from a CRT manufacturer. The only difference is that our CRTs offer a 40 percent or 50 percent savings.

While the CRTs go in one direction, all the byproducts, everything else goes in another direction, getting deposited in a byproducts separation area. You’ve got all of these pieces [that] are just commodities—plastics, motherboards that contain precious metals for recovery, steel—essentially there is nothing that comes out of these monitors that cannot be recycled.

The plastics are separated by color, which allows us to deliver a high-quality plastic to our plastics recyclers. We bale that accordingly. Plastics are staged and ready for shipping to our plastics recyclers downstream.

The same with the boards. The boards are staged and baled and prepped and ready to send to our precious metals recyclers.

MANAGING THE REJECTS. Then you are left with the CRTs that cannot be used. This is always the question: We know what you are doing with the good, but what are you doing with the bad?

This is the other reason why we decided to do this in the U.S. We know that all of our counterparts in Asia are bringing in this material because they want to manufacture new materials. We know what they are doing with the good CRTs, but what are they doing with the bad ones? It is very difficult for someone to jump on a plane to find out and see these operations. We wanted our customers to have the assurance concerning how we handle our materials.

The first step in the process is separating the glass. According to the new EPA rules, that is also the difference between creating a resalable commodity or a hazardous waste. We have a special process to separate the glass. The funnel glass and the panel glass have different chemical compositions and that is the reason for the separation. The CRTs enter a glass separation area where they are all separated individually in a self-contained, vacuum-type environment.

The funnel glass is in a state that the manufacturers ideally want, ready to put into its processes. They will put it through a cleaning process and then run it right into their manufacturing processes. The only thing that is on that glass is iron oxides. That is what they are looking to clean off of it. Once that material has been removed, the glass is translucent, it is a clear glass, it is still a leaded glass, but that is exactly what they are looking for.

REMANUFACTURING PROCESS. This is essentially Phase 1 of a two-phase process of taking these materials from obsolete materials all the way to remanufacturing. Everything that we’ve done to this stage is prep, both the reusable components—the CRTs—and the recyclable materials—the plastics, the boards and the wires. The CRTs will be sent off to the manufacturers. The same CRTs that we prep for them are not unlike them receiving new CRTs. The only difference is that they are going to do a cleaning and a polishing of these materials to make them that much better for the manufacturing process.

Some of these plants that are remanufacturing CRTs are state-of-the-art facilities. The ability to use a used CRT gives them a cost savings, and that is really where they benefit. And the market demand is also very big, and the consumers or the end users benefit from the reuse of these CRTs.

We want to be able to sort and separate all the reusable materials that we can and deliver it to these companies and allow them to do their parts so they can deliver these commodities to their customers. At the same time we are extending the use of these otherwise unusable materials.