Volume 16, Issue 3
fall 2019
Security Shredding News Serving the Security Shredding & Records Storage Markets
Visit us online at www.SecurityShreddingNews.com
Building Bridges
Electronics recyclers encounter numerous obstacles in their efforts to refurbish and resell electronics, but they hope to work with manufacturers, not against them, to achieve mutual goals.
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dvances in electronic product design have given the public astonishingly small, fast, and powerful digital tools in the past few years. These advances have given electronics recyclers something else, too—headaches. Electronic devices can present numerous barriers to repair or refurbishment as well as to recycling. It’s not necessarily intentional, says Billy Johnson, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), chief lobbyist and liaison to ISRI’s Electronics Division. “We understand [original equipment manufacturers] were not designing with recycling first and foremost. Yet when a product gets broken, it comes to us.” Recyclers and electronics manufacturers have a symbiotic relationship, Johnson says. The OEMs often hire recyclers to perform warranty repairs or ensure their products are recycled in ways that maximize material value, control hazards, and minimize waste. As OEMs have received negative publicity for some practices—their use of hazardous substances, batteries that catch fire, and so forth—and as they have become more environmentally and socially aware, they have become more receptive to recycler suggestions, Johnson says. “We’ve opened up a lot of lines of communication with them that we haven’t had in the past. … We’re telling them, ‘We want to help you. How can we figure out some answers?’ We can help OEMs create devices which are more recyclable and repairable.” Increasingly the two groups are trying to work together to resolve these issues. This is good for the OEMs’ image, and it’s essential for many recyclers’ bottom lines. With electronic products getting smaller and containing fewer metals—especially precious metals—“we’re seeing the value proposition change,” explains Darrell Kendall, executive director of the Recycling Industry Operating Standard, a management system ISRI founded for quality, environment, health, and safety management in recycling operations. “The scrap value of a phone is less than a couple of dollars,” he says. “If you wipe the data, unlock a phone, and refurbish it, you can sell it for between $250 and $300. Secondhand phones may have another five
By Jessica Zimmer years of life. Recyclers are looking to have a fair make batteries easier to replace, which might shake of maximizing the value and minimizing require a smaller battery, resulting in shorter the cost of repair.” run time.” Re m a i n i n g b a r r i e r s t o re p a i r a n d Kendall notes that “when [electronics r e f u r b i s h m e n t a r e p hy s i c a l , manufacturers] glue or wedge a battery informational, and technological. in, or build components around or “Working Recyclers say they use patience on top of it, they’re showing that and creativity to surmount they think this is the best place on these devices these obstacles, and they for the battery.” They use in a safe and effective work with ISRI to advocate glue and other materials in for solutions, whether ways that reflect their focus manner takes training, voluntary or through laws “on creating a quality supervision, and continuous or regulations. While a product they can sell for nascent right-to-repair a maximum profit.” They change based on the design movement in the United also respond to customer and material composition States also is working demands, from batteries that of particular toward increasing everyone’s don’t come loose when the a c c e s s t o p a r t s, r e p a i r device is dropped to creating devices.” information, and increased legal a “glass sandwich” so a phone is rights to repair and modify electronic waterproof, stylish, and light, he says. products, ISRI and some recyclers draw a Glued-down parts, fragile parts, and distinction between that group’s goals and those thin separators between battery components of professional recyclers. present significant challenges for recyclers, however. Excess glue makes it hard to open up the device and reach its components, particularly Repair barriers the motherboard, without causing damage. lectronics manufacturers say they make Fragile plastic and aluminum parts inside a design decisions to innovate or improve device can bend or break off during repair. performance. In comments Microsoft submitted “The shinier, the smaller, the prettier it is, the to a Federal Trade Commission-hosted event harder it is to take apart,” says Jim Levine, in July called “Nixing the Fix: A Workshop on president of Regency Technologies (Twinsburg, Repair Restrictions,” it stated that design choices Ohio). “While [design for recycling] has come a “that incidentally impact reparability can also be long way with certain products, like LED TVs, innovative responses to consumer preferences smaller devices such as cellphones, tablets, and and may form the basis on which companies wearables have become more of a challenge than compete. … For example, one company may ever before. Working on these devices in a safe choose to affix a battery in a certain way in order and effective manner takes training, supervision, to maximize its size and power, enabling longer Continued on page 3 device run time; while another company may
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