Recycling Magazine
http://www.recycling-magazine.com
Published: No. 18 issue 2008
By: Rainer Koehnlechner
Gold Diggers in E-Waste (pg. 1)
Alfred Hambsch and his GEEP Group are pioneers in the field of recycling electronic waste
The recycling of electronic waste has meanwhile become an everyday practice in both Germany and most other European countries. The waste is collected at designated points either by local councils or other institutions. Various large transport companies then bring it to central reprocessing plants where it is then broken down into small pieces in large recycling plants and separated into valuable fractions.
The situation in North America, however, is completely different: nearly 85 per cent of all electronic waste collected from American households is simply buried at landfill sites, which is currently still the cheapest method of disposing of it. The problem is not only that valuable metals such as copper are lost without any hope of recovery; the far greater problem is the fact that rainwater washes the metals, particularly the heavy ones, out of the electronic waste and into the soil or the groundwater. This presents a considerable health hazard for both people and animals, who, for example, ingest these heavy metals via the water supply.
The remaining 15 per cent of this electronic waste is currently being collected and then sent either to China or to any one of a number of African countries where it is then reprocessed, sometimes under catastrophic conditions.
Legislation similar to that is force in Europe that makes the collecting and recycling of electronic and electrical waste compulsory and regulates both the amounts that have to be collected and also the degree to which they have to be reprocessed has only existed for a short time in the USA and even then only in a few states. Several other states are also considering gradually introducing this kind of legislation.
The situation is, however, somewhat better when it comes to recycling office and IT devices and systems. The large manufacturers usually take care of this themselves. Most of the accumulated electronic waste comes from banks, insurance companies and other large organizations and mainly consists of computers, monitors, printers and other similar devices. This equipment is properly collected and either destroyed or reprocessed and partly resold on the foreign market.
GEEP Inc. is one of the companies to have established itself on this new market of the future with the ambitious aim of changing the entire electronic waste recycling market in North America. GEEP Inc. (Global Electronic and Electric Processing) is based in Barrie, Ontario and was founded by Alfred Hambsch, who emigrated from Germany to Canada 25 years ago. Starting as a scrap dealer in ferrous and non-ferrous metals, by the end of the 80s he had already begun specializing in recycling scrap wire. With several large wire recycling plants running simultaneously, Barrie Metals is capable of processing large amounts of scrap wire and the company has meanwhile become the largest recycler of wire in Canada.
It was in 1998 that Alfred Hambsch first entered into the business of recycling electronic waste. Initially, the waste was simply collected and manually recovered until a large ERP electronic waste processing plant was installed in Barrie in 2006. The plant now makes it possible to process approximately four tons of non-dismantled electronic waste per hour, thereby producing a number of valuable fractions. The company is currently still concentrating on reprocessing and reprocessing of telecommunications equipment. In the long term, however, GEEP also wants to begin recycling electronic waste from private households.
In cooperation with several companies working in the field of recycling and the reprocessing of metals, GEEP Inc. belongs to the Barrie Metals Group of Companies, which meanwhile employs a workforce of over 450 people.
GEEP offers one-stop recycling solutions
Leading manufacturers of electronic devices place great emphasis on the fact that their equipment is resold after a certain period of use or expertly recycled at the end of its service life. In order to offer leading OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) this service on an international basis, GEEP is currently setting up a complete network together with partner companies in America, Europe and Southeast Asia. With this aim in mind, GEEP is looking to enter into joint ventures with locally operating electronic waste recycling companies. The company already runs complete ERP electronic waste reprocessing plants at several central locations in the USA and Canada and further plants are currently being installed to serve the main metropolitan areas of North and Central America. GEEP meanwhile offers the complete range of equipment and systems for mechanically destroying electronic waste as well as wide-ranging recycling services for WEEE materials. The company now has over 150,000m2 of warehouse space available for this purpose at its various locations.
