Computer Recycling Center earns DNR certification

Certification gained from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in January serves as the foundation that will allow Reiss to begin crushing cathode ray tubes – CRTs – which are found in color televisions and computer monitors, within the next six to nine months.

The Computer Recycling Center, 1434 N. National Ave., is Missouri’s first DNR-certified electronics demanufacturer and resource recovery facility.

Reiss said he pursued the voluntary certification because regulations are lacking for his industry.

“We went to DNR and asked them if they would come in and regulate us … and they came in, and we had to put up a lot of money for (en)closure and inspections and spill controls and on and on,” Reiss said. He noted that the certification process cost more than $5,000 and means that his facility is visited frequently by representatives of DNR and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The certification will come in handy when, in the next 18 months, Missouri adopts federal guidelines for crushing CRTs, which is done to harvest the scrap metal inside them. The process is tricky, however, because the tubes also contain lead and phosphorus.

Under the pending federal guidelines, according to Reiss and DNR officials, certified facilities with the proper technology will be able to crush the tubes themselves, which will make transport easier, Reiss said.

“We transport these to the Doe Run company up by St. Louis … and we can only put 10 or 12 in a box, and when I get the authority to crush the tubes, I can put 20 or 30 in a box,” Reiss said.

Reiss already has ordered a shredder – necessary for CRT crushing. He said that each new service, process or type of service he adds must be approved by DNR, but while he’s waiting for that, he’ll use the shredder to dispose of hard drives.

“On the hard drive … (is) where sensitive information … is kept,” Reiss said.

Though people often rely on hard-drive cleaning or “wiping” services, Reiss isn’t sure that’s the best way to protect sensitive data when disposing of a hard drive.

“There’s always somebody who can bring them back,” Reiss said. “The only way is to shred those, and this machine … we throw them in there, and (they) come out about the size of your thumb.”

On April 21, the Computer Recycling Center teamed up with the city of Springfield and other recycling ventures around the city to collect 20 tons of e-waste for Earth Day.

Reiss said people are becoming more aware of the need to recycle e-waste responsibly, and he’s in the midst of planning the construction of a building that will be at least four times the size of his existing 4,000-square-foot facility and allow him to expand his seven member staff.

Currently, the Computer Recycling Center is able to break down and sell scrap of about 96 percent of the e-waste it receives – keeping it out of the landfill – but Reiss would like to hit 100 percent.

“There’s big movements now throughout America to ban everything from the landfills,” Reiss said. “There is no reason at all to throw any of this stuff into the landfills.”

Landfills, in fact, have rules in place that ban disposal of most e-waste, but some of it still manages to get in, according to Bob Hamilton, head of the Southwest Missouri Solid Waste Management District.

“Every trash hauler doesn’t sort the trash you set out by the curb, and there may be e-waste in there that they don’t know about that will make its way into the landfill,” Hamilton said.

The Southwest Missouri Solid Waste Management district has contributed grant money toward the Computer Recycling Center’s shredder to support Reiss’ recycling efforts.

“Some e-waste collection (centers) around the United States don’t recycle everything they receive,” Hamilton said. “If there’s a little bit of gold-wiring, copper-wiring, all the things they can recover, they do, but the rest of it they throw away, which a lot of is hazardous material. That may be thousands of miles from here, but eventually, that’s going to be in our ground water.”

Features Editor Maria Hoover contributed to this story.

Recycling Electronic Waste

Between 1997 and 2007, an estimated 500 million personal computers will become obsolete, according to Stanford University research. The lifespan of PCs has steadily declined from 4.5 years in 1992 to 2.8 years in 2007, shedding more light on the need to recycle e-waste.

What Can Be Recycled?

The Computer Recycling Center recycles mice, keyboards, PCs, printers, scanners, cellular phones, monitors and TVs. The Computer Recycling Center sells the scrap. A $10 fee is required for monitors and TVs, because of the cathode ray tubes they contain, but the rest of the waste is accepted free of charge.

Source: Computer Recycling Center[[In-content Ad]]