A Word About Recycling

Continuing from last week with information taken from an article in the E-Waste newsletter, we’ll start by talking more about a new recycling company in Nevada. This new company is aiming to become one of the major companies having an electric vehicle battery recycling operation. We find they have already raised $40 million to fund their efforts.

Since it is a new company with little experience in battery recycling, they are “getting their feet wet” by starting with smaller batteries. These are batteries from consumer electronics such as cellphones. Such batteries are much smaller and thus easier to handle compared with the large packs that will come from electric vehicles.

The new company was started by an executive who earlier was instrumental in developing battery technology for an electric car manufacturer. The company is even hoping the new technology they develop will be useful not only in recycling the batteries from electric vehicles, but also an improvement in recycling all batteries. (We hope they are successful as future projections see a much greater number of electric vehicles being made and used.)

Changing subjects to another article in the same newsletter. There we find that recycled materials are starting to come back again to former levels after being greatly reduced due to the virus. However, the virus has also created new challenges.

As a Tulsa, Okla. leader in the recycling business noted, “There is some increase in revenue that we’ve seen on the retail side for devices, but on the flip side there’s been increases in costs, and some slowdown of certain sectors of volume.”

Another leader from a Nashville company mentioned how they felt it necessary to hire “…a full-time staff position dedicated to maintaining COVID-19 safety protocols.” This new staff member was at the operation 10-hours a day to insure proper safety procedures for the virus were being followed.

The company also allowed members of the staff whose duties did not require them to be on-site to work from their homes. Additionally, upon the onset of the virus, they immediately contacted its contracted cleaning crew to begin a three-times-aweek deep cleaning of the company’s common areas.

A spokesperson for the company explained, “It in curred some cost, but it has ensured the safety and security of our employees.”

She also related that when the virus started, they shut down the company from March through May. This allowed them to deep-clean everything. Such cleaning is now continued on a scheduled basis. They also required employees to wear masks and other personal protective equipment. That, and spacing out the workers, helped prevent any of them from getting the virus. Unfortunately, it also slowed their operation down, which reduced any profit (which is understandable).

As is well known, when the virus hit, recycled materials coming in was reduced in most states. How much? Using three states as examples, we find in Illinois, there was a 30% drop from the same period the previous year. Oregon experienced a 20% drop, and in Vermont, there was about a 25% drop.

As mentioned above, fortunately the amount of recycled materials is starting to come back. In fact, one company had to schedule additional pick ups due to the increased volume. (We are sure the same is true for our local curb-side recycling efforts and at the Green Guy recycling dropoff site.)

Enough for today, so until next week, do have a great enjoyable, safe and healthy one...