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A Word About Recycling

A Word About Recycling

Sunday, December 6, 2020

(Starting this with a personal note.) I ended my last week’s column saying I would be heading up to Minnesota for Thanksgiving and the Holidays, and thus may not be able to submit these columns for a while... that was pre-mature; I ended up not going when I intended.

The day before I was to leave, with my vehicle packed and ready for the trip, got an email from my brother up there. He advised me it might be best to hold off for a while. He explained Minnesota is experiencing a ‘rampant’ increase in virus cases.

Thus, in several hospitals near him, not only are all the hospital rooms filled, but all their halls are filled with virus patients too. That information, plus the national Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommending, due to the virus, unnecessary traveling be limited during Thanksgiving period affected my travel plans. I delayed going for a little while. Enough about me.

With the Christmas gift-giving season upon us, many of the gifts could be electronic in nature. Thus, I thought I would touch on a few items that recently appeared in the E-Waste Recycling newsletter.

As might be expected, the virus has had an impact in the recycling industry. To help determine how much, a survey was sent to 600 government organization and company managers in five countries. They were asked both about their electronics purchasing and their Se-scrap management during this virus.

The survey showed nearly half of these large organizations had created jobs related to managing scrap electronics generated during the pandemic. They also found that 97% of surveyed companies reported they had purchased laptops because of the virus. Understandable, since many employees would be working at home with them.

About 75% of the laptops were new, the rest were from a secondary market. After the virus is gone, about one-fourth plan to erase the data from the laptops and re-sell them. Another fourth would be kept and used for other purposes. Most of the rest would either be stockpiled or recycled,

Another article concerned how the University of Colorado developed a thin circuit board material, designed for wearable devices designed to easily recycle at its end of life. It explained, “When the device is severely damaged or not needed, it can be fully recycled by soaking in the recycling solution.” (Interesting; recycling by soaking?)

And we’ll end with more good news from another article: “After declining for multiple years and then remaining flat, the U.S. electronics recycling rate inched back up in 2018, according to new figures from the U.S. EPA.”

After a high of 41.7 % of electronics being recycled in 2014, it declined the next three years down to about 35% but started back to in 2018 to over 38%. Figures for last year were not yet available.

Pray you had a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving. (We are doing more praying now because of the virus and conditions happening in this country and the world.) And have a great week.

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666