Chicago Sun-Times - August 2004

P.C. PC disposal

BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter

Every week, 200,000 to 400,000 pounds of discarded computers, docking stations, TVs, telecom equipment and other detritus of this electronic age are trucked into Intercon Solutions, a recycling company on Chicago's West Side.

There, on an assembly line run in reverse, crews of skilled "demanufacturing" workers, paid $12 to $20 per hour, strip down the gear that possibly only two years ago was someone's shiny new tool or toy. In an average of 1-1/2 minutes, the workers take apart the computers, separating central processing units, speakers, modems and the like into the large bins.

These parts are turned over to private smelting operations for recycling. In some cases, Intercon pays to dispose of potentially hazardous materials, including lead, chromium, cadmium, mercury and flame retardants in plastics.

Brian Brundage, 32, chief executive of privately held Intercon, which has been recycling electronics since 1987, said Intercon pays other companies to recycle these materials according to federal guidelines. This money comes from fees Intercon collects from its customers.

The company charges its customers to recycle their hardware -- $20 for accepting each computer, including a monitor, a central processing unit and printer. Intercon also receives a small fee from smelters for recycling iron and aluminum.

"People are surprised when they hear that companies pay to have their computers recycled," Brundage said. "But most consumer electronics actually have a negative value. The costs involved with processing are not offset by the value of the raw material constituents."

Intercon is part of a growing industry aimed at controlling the mess created by a technological society. E-waste, the potentially toxic residue, is the fastest growing part of municipal trash. Discarded construction material, including concrete and metal, make up the bulk of solid waste in landfills.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental group, estimates that consumer electronics accounts for 70 percent of heavy metals, including 40 percent of the lead, in landfills. And the problem has taken on an international scope, as old computers have been shipped to China and elsewhere in Asia, where environmental hazards are being created. For example, an environmental group found that copper was harvested from wires by burning the insulation and releasing toxins into the air.

Brundage said Intercon prides itself on "having zero landfill tolerance. Everything we generate has raw- or base-metal value. Everything we remove is reused."

The only way to get to these materials is by dismantling the equipment so that smelters can reclaim materials, such as lead solder or metals on speakers, he said. The metal may be recycled to build cars and high-rises and the plastics from computers can end up in plastic "lumber" used to make park benches and decks, he said.

Most of Intercon's clients are Fortune 500 companies and large organizations that feel a social responsibility to recycle electronics they make or use, he said. His customers include Bausch & Lomb, Peabody Energy, Ericsson, the University of Chicago, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory/U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense.

But some major manufacturers, which he declined to identify, also send Intercon equipment that simply has been replaced by the newer technology, hoping to keep the old equipment off the secondary market, where it can act as a drag on new-equipment prices.

What about consumers?

Brundage said consumers are not considered a major source for e-waste. In most jurisdictions, consumers are free to toss out old computers with the trash. But he said that likely will change in the years ahead.

"Consumers are not a core business," he said. "We're not aggressively pursuing that market, but we're not going to turn them away." Intercon will recycle electronics for consumers starting at a minimum charge of $100 for five computers.

Information on e-waste recycling is available at Intercon's Web site at www.interconrecycling.com.

Brundage said: "Our company puts a great value on being able to say definitely that nothing you send us will ever be disposed of, and this is why we won't try to resell your equipment to make a quick buck, or pack it in a container headed for we know not where, but this is also the reason for the nominal fee that we charge."

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