A Word About Recycling
We all know the virus has affected everyone in one way or another, including the recycling of electronics. Thus today, we will cover a little of some of the changes. Information taken from a couple of articles in an E-Scrap newsletter.
An article started with “Processors and state programs alike saw a lot less material this spring as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. But in the last couple months, inbound volumes have returned and surged in some cases.”
To help take care of the increasing amount of electronics being recycled, steps taken by several companies were mentioned. The first had to do with that little town north of us, Austin. There, we found, “R3eWaste, a zero-landfill electronics recycling company, has opened a 10,000 square foot eWaste facility in North Austin, serving residential and business customers.”
The R3eWaste company, with its headquarters in Phoenix, AZ, “…has over two decades of experience recycling electronics, computers and other eWaste.” Fortunately for Austin, unlike most other eWaste recyclers in the city, R3 also has electronics recycling services for residential drop-off customers. Additionally, they also provide free pickups for businesses.
For those of you familiar with the city, the new facility is located at 2216 Rutland Drive, Suite B, Austin, TX 78758. They will take all standard electronic components. This includes data center equipment, computers, monitors, and TVs (even CRTs). Other items taken are printers, cell phones, batteries, cameras, audio equipment, UPS devices, credit card devices, and much more.
Enough about them, now to another new recycling facility. This one in New York. It will handle recycled Lithium-ion batteries. The company doing this, a Canadian company, Li-Cycle, was started in 2016. This new $175 million processing hub in New York is expected to handle at least 10 million pounds of lithium-ion batteries per year.
The new facility will be able to process all types of lithium-ion batteries. For example, those used in electronic devices, e-mobility, electric vehicles and energy storage, Their processing method is able to recover between 80% and 100% of the materials used in these lithium-ion batteries. This New York unit will be the company’s second commercial-scale processing facility.
Going next to Grand Rapids, Michigan, we find an electronics recycling company, Comprenew, is adding additional vehicles to its fleet. These additional vehicles will be used by the 30-year-old company to pick up more recycled electronic items from homes and small businesses across the state.
The company has a strict zero-landfill policy for all electronic waste. It refurbishes items whenever possible for affordable resale. Additionally, Comprenew provides digital equity and job training programs to community members in need.
And finally for today, we’ll go to Carson City, Nevada. There, a new company just starting out, is looking to build a major electric vehicle battery recycling operation. It’s ‘getting its feet wet’ by initially just processing batteries from consumer electronics. However, they have already raised $40 million to fund their efforts to develop a battery recycling process to capture used batteries from the electric vehicle market. (Let’s wish them luck as more and more vehicles in the future will be powered by batteries. At the end of their life, these batteries will need to be recycled and processed into useable materials.)
Till next week, do have an enjoyable, safe, and healthy one...
