Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Star

By Darcel Rockett

Electronic recycler expands with move to Chicago Heights

Site has space available for future growth

Intercon Solutions, a company that recycles electronic waste, has relocated from Chicago to Chicago Heights.

The company has doubled its space with the move this month to the 250,000-square-foot facility at 1001-59 Washington Ave. The relocation was prompted by the business's continuous growth in its industry, said Brian Brundage, chief executive officer of the ISO 14001 electronics recycling company.

"We wanted to make sure we could recycle more items without having to move again," Brundage said. "Now, with almost 15 acres, if Intercon Solutions needed to expand further, we could add onto this building."

Brundage said the company was looking for a new site for the past 10 months before settling on the Chicago Heights property, which had been vacant for two years. The property is the former site of ABC - NACO's railroad trackwork assembly plant.

With several processes involved in the recycling of electronic waste, Intercon specializes in the de-manufacturing of all types of electronics without the use of landfills, or incinerating the material. Nor does it resell the product.

Instead, the company uses laborers to dismantle the electronic item, reducing it to its basest form before selling it to be used again in other industries.

"Any other recycler would resell something like a 17-inch computer monitor on eBay, but that's not truly taking care of the product," Brundage said. "They don't know when that piece does get truly recycled."

Brundage said the company's methods eliminate the need to mine land for more product material or to dispose of it in a landfill.

"We make sure the asset is properly handled and not deployed again," he said.

Because of its method of recycling, the company was given $30,000 in grants from the state last year to expand on its process of dismantling electronic waste.

Using the grant money, Brundage said Intercon is looking to add 10 workers to its current staff of approximately 25.

"The community has been extremely cooperative and people have already come in (to fill out) applications," he said.

Currently, the company is working on getting a $250,000 grant to purchase machinery that will assist and expedite the dismantling process, without needing to eliminate jobs, Brundage said.

The company has worked closely with the state on guidelines for disposing electronic waste, Brundage said.

"The state saw our unique way of handling waste and has since become involved with us heavily," he said.

"According to federal law, any corporation that has 250 pounds of e-waste a year has to dispose of it properly. Unfortunately, state and local governments often supersede such federal legislation and say throwing items such as computers into landfills is acceptable.

"But there's no reason to do that. Why would you want to bury raw garbage that ultimately smells like trash and gas? That's why we got proactive. There's a cost to doing something right, but it is not an outrageous cost."

Among the company's clients are the city of Chicago, the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy.

"We (deal with) 133,000 personal computers a day (along with other electronics), and the industry keeps growing extremely fast," Brundage said.

He added that the business is currently in talks with the Southwest Mayors and Managers Association about the organization becoming a client.

"If we can coordinate an e-waste plan for the city of Chicago, we can do it for anyone," he said.

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