Electric Ambition

In recent years, consolidation has occurred within the industry, which also is dealing with the proliferation of state programs that mandate the collection and recycling of some obsolete electronics.

While increasing raw materials prices have helped to improve margins for electronics recyclers and make materials like plastics more economical to recover, electronics recyclers still need to ensure healthy volumes of obsolete electronics flow into their facilities on a regular basis. With economies of scale playing a critical role in the efficiency of such operations, competition in some regions can be intense, and a company’s reach can affect its ability to attract material.

While electronics recyclers have been able to benefit from their business-to-business relationships to keep material flowing into their facilities, they do not enjoy a similar relationship with consumers. While legislation at the state level has mandated the recycling of some consumer electronics, helping electronics recyclers in these states to capture more consumer devices, these various laws have created administrative headaches and confusion in some cases. Currently, 13 states have approved legislation mandating the recycling of some electronic devices—largely those containing CRTs—that are in various stages of enactment.

While speaking at the Electronics & Battery Recycling ’08 conference in Toronto this spring, Steve Skurnac, president of Sims Recycling Solutions North America, noted that this lack of regulatory harmony is one of many challenges facing the electronics recycling industry. As a publicly traded company, chief among these challenges for Sims was providing sustainable options while meeting economic expectations, he said. Additionally, Skurnac said plastics diversity issues, fuel costs as they relate to reverse logistics and finding vendors who meet economic and environmental performance standards also continued to challenge the industry.

Despite these challenges, Alfred Hambsch, president of Global Electric Electronic Processing (GEEP), based in Barrie, Ontario, remains optimistic. Hambsch, who was among the speakers featured in an opening panel discussion during the Electronics & Battery Recycling ’08 conference, predicted the electronics recycling industry would be the fastest growing industry in the United States in the next five to 10 years.

While the electronics recycling industry within North America can still be considered fragmented, a number of national players have emerged. Chief among them is Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS) of North America. This company takes the top spot in Recycling Today’s list of the 20 largest electronics recyclers in North America.

Among the services offered by the SRS division of the Sims Group are research and development in the area of waste electric and electronic recycling (WEEE), dense media separation, plastics recycling, CRT recycling, asset recovery and toner cartridge recycling. Globally, the company has 22 physical operations, seven of which are in North America, providing asset recovery services and electronics recycling.

In an effort to establish itself as an industry leader, Skurnac told Electronics & Battery Recycling ’08 attendees SRS was ISO 1400 certified, practiced full downstream accountability, bio monitored staff and provided extensive employee training. To address the larger issue of environmental sustainability, Sims is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, purchases green energy and is researching and developing technology to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and energy consumption.

Also placing on the list in the 10th position is GEEP. This Canadian company offers material and inventory tracking, refurbishing, secure information and data destruction services using proprietary software, repair and remarketing services, shredding and assay and analysis of recovered raw materials. The company, led by Hambsch, bills itself as unique in that its Barrie facility features equipment that can convert non-recyclable commingled plastics derived from processing electronic waste into diesel fuel. While Hambsch has said that a very small percentage of GEEP’s plastics are processed in this way, the nanofuel technology helps GEEP meet its zero-landfill policy.

Another company that distinguishes itself from the other electronic recyclers on the list is Intercon Solutions, Chicago Heights, Ill., which is the only company on Recycling Today’s list that does not incorporate shredding into its operations. Intercon has "taken steps to add labor instead of robotics and/or shredders, increasing both productivity and employment rates," Intercon CEO Brian Brundage told Recycling Today in 2006. "We prefer to perform our demanufacturing process by hand, eliminating inherent hazards associated with mechanized equipment, airborne pollutants and the contamination of recyclable material."

Despite the higher labor costs incurred through demanufacturing, Brundage has said the process is well worth it, as the company is able to mitigate customer concerns about data and environmental safety while finding domestic markets for all of its secondary materials. With risk mitigation in mind, Intercon does not offer a resale option, either. "There is no way, once you’ve resold something, to control that asset," Brundage told Recycling Today. "We do business with a lot of OEMs. They want to be sure that their recycling reputation is in good standing."

MaSeR, which ranks in the 19th position on Recycling Today’s list of the 20 largest electronics recyclers in North America, is also following its own path. The company’s Barrie, Ontario, plant incorporates delamination technology that was developed in Europe and that MaSeR says is unique to the North American market.

The front end of MaSeR’s plant is a series of shredding and sorting devices that liberate and remove ferrous materials and some plastics while downsizing the remaining materials. Following this preparation phase, materials, including pieces of circuit boards, hard drives and miscellaneous fastened pieces, are conveyed to MaSeR’s Fractionater for delamination. Following the Fractionater, the un-bonded constituent materials are segregated by size and recovered through a series of sieves and fluid-bed separators that yield three recyclable commodities: aluminum choppings and powder; mixed copper and precious metals choppings and powder; and mixed plastics.

"We are able to recover more from the same material than other processors," Dale Johnson, CEO and president of MaSeR CEO, told Recycling Today in 2005. "For example, we recover aluminum and plastic that is otherwise burned in the process of smelting for precious metals."

The challenge for MaSer, as it is for every electronics recycler, is to secure a steady flow of material that benefits its own profitability and its customers’ bottom lines.

Sandy Selman, chairman of MaSeR Corp., has stressed that the company does not compete with its suppliers because MaSeR does not have direct business relationships with the businesses and consumers who are generating end-of-life electronics. In fact, he has said the company’s suppliers can leverage their relationship with MaSeR to bring more volume into their own operations.

Capturing additional volume is a primary goal for recyclers, regardless of the material they process. The attention that the digital TV conversion and the raft of state legislation is generating is helping to raise consumer awareness of the need for proper disposal of electronics and the creation of new companies, even in states where legislation is not on the docket. The opportunities this awareness presents for existing electronics recyclers appear to be abundant.

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net. This text and the associated list were updated Sept. 9, 2008, to reflect later submissions.