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by Robert Feinbaum
+Consumer electronics make up a significant and growing, part of
the solid waste disposed in landfills. Owing to the rapid
obsolescence of products, the current 1% to 2% of the wastestream
now made up of "brown goods" threatens to grow at an alarming
rate.
heGartnerGroupinSantaClara,CA,est&a&s that 79 mil-
lioncomputers wereretired from service worldwide by 1996. This year
another 3 1 inillion P C s will join them, and the number is
expected to climb to 42 million per year b y e
country, recycling options need to be present. One option is to
ship the equipment overseas where it can be taken apart; another
option is to strip components and valuable metals here and dispose
of the remaining por- tions in a responsible manner. Both reuse and
recycling are well under- T: turn of the century. Growing numbers
ot other consumer way throughout the US.
electronic products are also stuck on back shelves awaiting
disposal. Many electronic products are still useable when their
original own-
ers discard them. Although businesses may need more computing
power, better sound quality, or other improvements, the equipment
is still quite satisfactory for other applications. The trick is to
find a way to move equipment from the original owners to new users.
Then, at the very end of life, when equipment can no longer be
cost-effectively repaired in this
The Overall PktUra Some computers retired from business wind up
at home, either for work or for use by family members. Many others
get stored in back rooms or closets. Several possibilities arise
when h e original owners are finally ready to dispose of
equipment:
Sell it to a used computer dealer, a parts stripper, or private
party (at
ne used computer elling used machin Street Journal esti sold in-
-.
:ontinue to grow as
dealer apiece. ~es has become a thriving mates that 2.4 million
us 1996. The business look computer leasing compa
____._-_______I- - business.The ed comae& s as though it
nies and man-
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a garage sale, flea market, or through an advertisement in the
newspaper); Donate it to a non-profit organization and receive a
tax write-off; Send it back to the manufacturer as a trade-in (or
at the end of a lease period); or Throw it in the garbage-an option
still open to many households throughout the country. When
secondary users-a family member. non-profit
organization, or purchaser of used equipinent-dispose of the
equipment, other options occur:
Send it to a scrap dealer who will recycle the metals and
perhaps the plastic, and deal with the monitor in a respon- sible
manner; Sell it to a dealer who ships equipment overseas for recy-
cling; or Have it hauled away as garbage.
Secondary S a l a Dealers in every large community buy and sell
used com- puters. Most confine themselves to recent systems (IBM
386 and above) and components, and many offer service as well. A
quick survey of phone books from major metropolitan areas shows the
listings of used computer dealers nearly every- where (one
exception is the Los Angeles area where for some reason Pacific
Bell does not have a Yellow Pages category for Used Computer
Dealers). Elsewhere in California, to add perspective, San
JoselSanta Clara-the very heart of Silicon Valley-lists 14 used
computer dealers; Orange County, 13; San Francisco, IO; San Diego,
8; and OaklandBerkeley, 4. The Central Valley communities of
Sacramento and Fresno
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ufacturers take back powerful machines that still have lots of
life left in them. Organizations devoted to reusing a whole range
of materials have also
gotten into the business of selling used electronic equipment.
Two, in par- ticular, are worth mention:
The Arts and Media Exchange IS a three-year-old division of
Berke- ley’s Urban Ore, which handles art materials, computers and
other electronics, and photographic equipment. Urban Ore was
started 18 years ago to accept building materials that would
normally have been taken to the city’s landfill. Since then it has
become a thriving for- profit business selling everything from
computers to antique claw foot bathtubs. “We buy some things,” says
Frank Atkins of the Arts & Media Exchange, “but only if we know
what value to place on them, and we only charge donors if they have
large loads with limited amounts of reusable or recyclable items.”
Recycletown in Sonoma County, about one hour north of San Francis-
co, accepts all types of reuseable goods from individuals and
business- es. Since the store is located at the entrance to the
county landfill, it is the first stop for resellable items. Clients
aren’t charged a dump fee for stuff left at Recycletown, but
neither an: they paid for the materials. Major funding for the
organization comes from a contract with the county. Urban Ore sells
about 100 computers a month, with most going for
$10 to $20. All of the equipment is sold “as is.” Recycletown
sells about the same volume of computers at about $25 for a typical
unit (component parts are less). The staff “fiddles” with the
equipment, but doesn’t do repairs. Both organizations sell most of
their computer equipment, but say they give some away to
non-profits in their areas.
Parts Houses Secondhand dealers strip parts from computers that
can’t be re-sold. Inte- grated circuits, motherboards, and disk
drives are likely to be separated,
packed into boxes, and sold “as is” to sophisticated customers
who build or repair computers.
A number of companies deal directly with manufacturers, buying
and selling excess and obsolete UI ventory. M Cubed, in Sunnyvale,
CA, bills itself as a full service company. “We work with corporate
clients to take all scrap and equipment from their facilities,”
they say. According to a sales representative, “on stuff we can
sell, we split the proceeds with the client ...[a nd on stuff we
can’t sell] we will provide a scrap report and a certificate of
destruction.” The company receives computer parts as well as
obsolete and off-lease equipment. Parts are sold from an 1
l,OOO-ft? warehouse. All disk drives are tested. Buyers in the
computer service busi- ness usually have testing capability for
other parts.
@waElectronics, based in San Diego, CA, is amongthe largest
play- ers in the industry (with sales of $98 million in 1996). It
purchases inven- tory direct fromoriginal equipment
manufacturers-inventory that is often discontinued and the
manufacturer doesn’t want to get out in the market- place. Aurora
scraps out the parts for its Part Smart Network. This Inter- net
service lists some 2 billion parts in its database. According to
Jim Cowert, the company’s chairman, Aurora intends to “create a
one-stop shopping network offering a range of services from spare
parts sourcing to asset recovery and remarketing.”
9---------”-------------.1”--. -
7 Donation Programs In recent years, school districts across the
state have caught the technol- ogy fever. In 1993, the San
Francisco Unified School District created a Technology Master Plan
that stated, “Every major facet of our civiliza- tion is
inextricably tied to computer-based technology. Education is just
lagging a bit.” The plan envisioned a network concept, with
computers in classrooms, teaching laboratories, and at central
administration.
San Francisco educators realized that there were a number of
bamers
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80 MSW Management
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MAY/JUNE 1998
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o achieving their vision, not the least of which was lack of
funding for wchase of hardware, installation of wiring at school
sites, and linking he network together. In 1993, the district
zstimated that hardware alone liould cost over $53 million;
management, training, technical support, ind communication links
would add $16 million, for a total of about ;70 million.
At about the same time that the San Francisco School District
was ireparing its technology plan, a number of agencies started up
to help xhools and other non-profit organizations obtain computer
equipment. in Califomia, several major non-profit organizations,
and a host of small- :r groups, serve as conduits for donation of
computers. Three of the major youps are: * Computer Recycling
Center (Santa Clara); * Detwiler Foundation Computers for Schools
Program (La Jolla); and * LA Shares (Los Angeles).
Each of these organizations takes a slightly different approach
to its inission. The ComputerRecycling Center (CRC). CRC runs
centers in Santa Clara, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, and Sacramento
where individuals and cor- ;>orations can drop off computers.
The organization also picks up large quantities from corporate
donors. According to Steve Wyatt, founder and partner, about 1,OOO
tpy of equipment comes in, and about 15,000 units/year are donated.
Generally, he adds, there’s a 3: I ratio of com- puters coming in
to going out, and a 5:1 ratio of monitors.
CRC accepts any type of equipment, working or not. The organiza-
tion runs training programs where equipment is repaired and has
creat- ed written curricula for courses ranging from hardware
repair to customer relations. Course materials have been offered to
several school districts, and Wyatt sees his organization moving
further towards assisting edu- cators to prepare students for work
in the computer field.
CRC also sells items at its stores in Santa Clara and Santa
Rosa: whole systems (for example a 386 with color monitor for $99
and a high-pow- ered Pentium system for up to $1,000) as well as
parts to third party ser- vice companies. The organization receives
money from the state of California for refurbishing computers,
which are then donated to K- 12 schools. CRC also makes roughly 10%
of its operating budget from sale of materials for recycling.
The group’s philosophy is to keep items out of landfills. But
lately that has become more difficult. Wyatt notes that “previously
we were able to sell leaded glass, metal frames, and plastic to
recyclers, and we had a secondary market for working monitors. But
in the last quarter the only market has been for color monitors ...
and we have to pay a haz-waste fee to companies that take
monitors.” Even so, he says, only non-recy- clable waste such as
plastic cups, foodwaste, and strapping finds its way into the
organization’s dumpsters. Detwiler Foundation Computers for
Schools. Detwiler Foundation’s program may be the largest in the
state of Cali- Iomia, as welt as the most heavily publicized.
According to Diana Detwiler, executive director. the Foundation
donates about 1,800 com- puters per month to K- 12 schools mainly
from corporate sources. “They will fax us an inventory list and we
will arrange for pickup,’’ she says. Detwiler works with anetwork
of vocational training institutions through- out the state to test
and repair donated computers. “We send computers to local repair
shops and to local schools,” she adds. The aim is to have local
donations repaired locally and then sent to local schools.
Roughly half the computers that Detwiler receives are working.
The others are used for parts to refurbish the remaining units. “We
use every- thing we can,” says Detwiler, and items that are broken
beyond repair are “directed to an approved recycler.” Receipts from
recycling are min- imal. Most of the funding for this $1 million
organization comes from corporations, foundations, and individuals.
LA Shares. LA Shures started five years ago as a materials reuse
pro- gram. Although its mission is broader than electronic
equipment, according toexecutive director Bert Ball, electronics
constitute the sec-
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ond largest category of items donated (after office furniture).
He estimates that his organi- zation gives 3,000 to 4,000 computers
per year to schools and non-profit organizations in the Los Angeles
area. LA Shares offers all of its services free, but it does have
fairly strict dona- tion rules. Equipment must be in working order
(the organization does no repairs), and com- puters need to be at
the 386 level and above. According to Ball, about 99% of the stuff
that
for donation. All of the equipment is picked up. Companies must
provide a written inventory of the items together with an estimated
value, and a signature of the authorizing individual. Altogether,
to date, about 700 local business- es have provided donations, and
more than 1,500 tons of perfectly good reusables have been saved
from needlessly ending up in landfills.
One local reuse program has received spe- cial acclaim.
TheOaklandTechnology Exchange
comes in is working. When equipment is received, hard drives are
wiped clean and diag- nostics are performed before they are sent
out
aims to foster computer education for students and provide
computer support to the Oakland Unified School District.
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at the Technical High School and provides stu- dents with skills
in computer repair, real world work experience while attending high
school, and opportunities to earn a computer for home or college
use. Through the Computer Technol- ogy Academy, 120 students
receive training in computer repair. Corporate donations provide
close to 1,000 computers a year, which are repaired and distributed
to student interns or to schools within the district.
These organizations, and many smaller ones, provide a major
source of computers for schools and non-profits in California.
Incentives to donate used equipment will expand this year thanks to
enhanced federal income tax write-offs for busi- nesses donating
newer equipment to schools. The State of California, through the
Department of Education, also intends to expand its computer
recycling grants for equipment donations to K- 12 schools.
Recycling Only groups that carefully screendonations can hope to
eliminate scrapping equipment. Most non-profits find that a sizable
portion of the donations they receive cannot be repaired or sal-
vaged. At that point, the established scrap indus- try takes
over.
Non-profit agencies take one of two approach- es to recycling:
either give one dealer all their scrap-valuable computer boards
along with monitors which usually incur a charge for dis- posal-or
separate scrap and sell it off to recy- clers offering the best
price for each of the materials. Some non-profits even workon
acred- it system where mixed scrap is given to recy- clers in
exchange for components needed to fix other units.
& . - C ~ ~ ~ g g ~ z a r e composed.oLaYaFiety- sf -
materials. -One analysis of theraw material a k e u p of a mal
computer foundthat t h e . Iagest com2onents were $ 5 ~ 5
l2&9%Mg+- . - tics (23%), -- iron (20.5%), I_ - ._ aluminum I I
(14.1%),
----
-_ concentrations of gold, silver, and rare earth met- als are
the valuable components of the scrap. However, even the plast
icsa&Jx~laa~m~o~- itors can. and are, beinp r e c y c l a
Fox IntegratedTechnologies in San Josepro- vides “end of life”
services for all types of elec- tronic goods. The company takes
printed circuit boards and integrated circuits and splits the rev-
enue from saleof materials withclients. Fox also accepts finished
goods, such as discontinued products, for destruction. “There is a
charge for this service,” says Bob Fox, president, “but we give
certification of destruction,” which is impor- tant to
manufacturers who don’t want theirprod- ucts showing up for
unauthorized re-sale. A refiner handles monitors, and there is a
charge for disposal (which is offset against proceeds from the
metals).
Fox takes monitors and recycles hard plas-
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82 m MSW Management MAYIJUNE 1998
mailto:[email protected]://wwwshred-tech.com
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tics, but others such as Silicon Salvage in Ana- lations have,
thus far, made it impossible to heim stay away from monitors,
keyboards, and do so. printers and wind up putting most plastics in
the Video Display Corporation (VDC) in Tuck- t r a s h . . m t h e
r recyclers gather monitors for er, GA, has accumulated an
inventory of container-load shipment overseas (usually to 50,000
used television tubes. “We’ll take
I China). According to Jack Brady, an entre- whole
tubesdependingon the type. and the preneurial recycler who heads
WCS in Newbery quantity to supply the TV repair industry,” Park,
“For years, Southem Califomia has been says manager Bob Liss. VDC
also reconsti- a hotbedof recycling because of materials need-
tutes monochrome computer tubes by strip- ed in the Far East. They
can handle anything ping the phosphors and regunning under
electronic because the cost of labor is such that vacuum. Color
monitors are more difficult, they can run acrew and recover every
last-bolt.” but the company can change the gun in the
Micro Metallics Corporation in San Jose, a neck so that tubes
with screens that are not .unit of the giant N o G a a Mining
Company, bumt too badly can be retumed to use. accepts monitors
andships t h e x e - Metals are the most valuable component of in
Ouebec along w- b oardcand copper computers and other electronic
goods.fIandv &
-nts. However, adds Hai Teh, manager, m an, a large smelting
company based in -_are b&v a nd the freight cost is h a . Con
necticut,-grves the state of CALfomia from It would make i t a x c
h e a p e r to accept moni- its smelter in Arizona. The company
recently
\
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2,200Ib. up andrunning. Thefocus ison mechan- ical separation.
The recycling line incorporates a size-reduction operation that can
handle for-
eign materials such as metals, and wet and dry separation
equipment developed by MBA, including unique air-classification and
high-
Circle #I04 on Reader Service Card
81 MSW Management
throughput wet grinding systems. The American PlasticsCouncil
isencouraged
by the results and intends to continue working with
theelectronics industry todevelop the infras- tructure to treat
plastics in a cost-effective man- ner. Although the economics are
not currently favorable, plastics industry officials hope that fur-
ther processing developments at MBA and more effective collection
may smn provide good qual- ity recycled feedstock at prices that
the industry finds acceptable.
Off shore Recycling San Francisco-based HMR accepts almost all
types of electronic goods and normally pays the owners a scrap
value. The company has its own fleet of trucks and picks up 90% of
the materi- als it handles. And the amount is large-1 mil- lion
Ib./mo. in its San Francisco plant and another .333 millionlb. in i
tshs Angelesoperation-The company resells what it can-TVs for $50
to $100, VCRs for $30 to $50, computer systems (386s for $25,486~
for $200 and Pentiums up to $600) and parts, often “as is” to
customers.
HMR tries to sell equipment because reuse is almost always more
profitable than recycling. The company employs three salespeople to
call cus- tomers and inform them about new arrivals. “We repair it
or break it down” says Chris Jankos of HMR. Materials that can be
recovered quickly, especially non-ferrous metals, circuit hoards,
and plastics are sent to local recyclers. HMR trucks the plastics
to a local recycler but receives no pay- ment. The company also
deals extensively with non-profits. Jankos points out that
“businesses donate equipment that, 9 times out of IO, the non-
profit can’t use. We purchase the equipment and give them money to
buy what they need.”
Much of what can’t be sold in the US is shipped to HMR’s
affiliate in the Philippines, where according to Jankos, “they
break it down to nuts and bolts.” Monitors are refurbished and sold
throughout Asia. In the future HMR hopes to be able to crush CRTs
in San Francisco and ship abroad.
Conclusion The tide of used computers is just starting to hit
the secondary market. Thus far, only limited assistance in dealing
with these items has come from local governments or from agencies
seek- ing to meet wastereductiongoals. Butthat might change as
computers and other electronic equip- ment begins to show up more
frequently in land- fills. Disposal bans are not out of the
question and changes in regulations to facilitate recycling may
also be forthcoming. Infrastructure for reusing and recycling
computer products will need to stretch to meet the challenge of
collect- ing and dealing with the flood of computers and other
electronics in the years to come. MSW
Robert Feinbaum is president of Feinbaum Associates in Oakland,
CA.
MAY/JUNE 1998
