Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
By Ian Harvey
Published: Saturday November 11, 2006
Firm Finds Treasure Amid Tech Trash
Where most people see obsolete computers and electronics, Alfred Hambsch sees more than gold -- he sees black gold.
As the president of what he calls the largest "e-waste" recycling company on the planet, Mr. Hambsch has built not just a business but a calling, processing obsolete electronics and turning them into useable raw materials including metals, glass and plastic.
And some time next month he'll take delivery of a machine that will turn plastic scrap into diesel fuel that will drive generators to power the other machines used in the recycling process.
It's an ambitious scheme whose goal is not just reducing costs within Barrie Metals Group's sprawling 12-hectare plant beside Highway 400 in Barrie, Ont. It will also nearly eliminate the last 4 per cent of materials that had previously gone to landfill as unsalvageable.
"When you have mixed plastics, say PVC and polyethylene, nobody wants to buy them because you can't reuse them," Mr. Hambsch says from North Carolina, where he is checking on his recycling operations there. "Now, we can turn it back into what it started as -- oil, but diesel oil."
How much fuel the process will recover and at what energy cost is still a bit fuzzy.
"We have to install it and start processing material and get it working," says Mr. Hambsch, who recently bought out a German-based e-waste recycler in Edmonton, Alta., and built a $10-million plant there to process 30,000 tonnes annually.
"I don't want to make wild estimates, but the process is very efficient and works at low pressure and temperatures of only about 250 to 350 C."
The real win, he insists, is that less than 1 per cent of all the materials sent to his plant will end up in a landfill.
The company's core processing entity, Global Electric Electronic Processing Inc., or GEEP, a division of the privately held Barrie Metals Group, runs at about half its 40,000-tonnes-a-year capacity. It produces more than $100-million in sales annually and employs 250 people.
The recycling process is labour-intensive. First, components are stripped by hand to separate circuit boards, glass screens, plastic shells, wiring and other components. Then machines grind and shred the pieces.
Copper, gold, silver and glass are sold as raw materials and returned to the manufacturing cycle, as are most of the plastics.
"We're so far behind here in Ontario with this, and in North America, too," says Mr. Hambsch, who bought Barrie Metals Group in 1984, nine years after arriving in Canada from his native Germany.
"I went to Europe for this technology because there, as of March this year, they have zero landfill sites. They have to deal with it."
North America, with its vast tracts of land, simply buries junked electronics, making Mr. Hambsch shudder as he counts off the toxins engineered into the average computer and monitor.
About 140,000 tonnes of computer equipment, phones, televisions, stereos and small appliances went to Canadian landfills in 2002, according to Environment Canada, concealing such hazardous materials as 4,750 tonnes of lead, 4.5 tonnes of cadmium and 1.1 tonnes of mercury.
For the most part, North American authorities haven't caught up with the reality that 85 per cent of discarded electronics and electrical equipment is being buried, Mr. Hambsch says.
New regulations in Europe have banned lead, mercury, cadmium and other toxic materials from electronic products, and indications are that other jurisdictions will adopt the standards, meaning electronics will be safer to dispose of in future. In the meantime, however, there is a massive toxic legacy of equipment lurking in homes and businesses.
In 2004 in Ontario, of the 200,000 tonnes of household appliances, audio visual electronics, IT and telecommunications equipment that were disposed of, only the household appliances -- washing machines, fridges, dishwashers and dryers -- were diverted in any meaningful numbers, according to a study by Waste Diversion Ontario. About 62 per cent of the 110,000 tonnes of washers and other appliances were diverted to recycling -- but up to 99 per cent of the rest of the materials went to landfill.
The study recommended setting up a recycling program, but it isn't clear who would fund such an effort. One plan calls for manufacturers and importers to become stewards and pay into a fund for future diversion and recycling. Manufacturers, meanwhile, favour a levy that would be paid at the retail level by consumers.
Implementation would be a mammoth task.
"There's the issue of, what standards do we set for the recyclers?" notes Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario. "We need to ensure they are responsible and not just dumping material or shipping it offshore to jurisdictions where standards are more lax."
The disposal process must start with the design, she says. Engineers should create products intended to be recycled with minimal effort.
Mr. Hambsch is adamant that some action is long overdue.
"It makes no difference if the toxins are leaching into the St. Clair River from the left bank or the right bank," he says, referring to the convoy of trucks departing Toronto daily destined for landfill in Michigan. "Pollution from e-waste is a global issue."
In Ontario, GEEP's raw materials come from businesses looking to dispose of obsolete equipment, not from municipal waste-diversion programs. Alberta is the only province with an integrated disposal fee on electronics, which pays GEEP's Edmonton plant $700 a tonne to process e-waste into reusable commodities. Similar levies are in place in California and Maine.
"We have to think of the end of a product's life when we buy it," Mr. Hambsch said. "Globally, e-waste processing is already a $30-billion [U.S.] business, but the U.S. produces as much e-waste as the rest of the world combined.
"This is the fastest growing industry on the planet. We'll need another 100 plants like mine just for North America."
Landfill bound?
140,000
Tonnes of computer equipment, phones, TVs, stereos and small appliances that went to Canadian landfills in 2002
96%
Portion of obsolete electronic components processed by Global Electric Electronic Processing that are fully recycled
62%
Percentage of discarded washers, dryers and other household appliances that were recycled in Ontario in 2004
