May 22, 2007

Columbia Tribune.com

Electronics recycler stays ahead of U.S. curve
Operation takes cue from Europe's policies.

CHICAGO - You could say Brian Brundage treats recycling like a sausage-maker handling a pig: He throws nothing away.

Every day tons of old computers, TV sets, cell phones and other electronic waste enter Brundage's Chicago Heights, Ill.-based operation, and not one scrap winds up in a landfill.

"This stuff was made in factories, starting as raw materials and coming off an assembly line as a product," said Brundage, chief executive of Intercon Solutions. "We put old products on a disassembly line. We break each item down to raw materials and send them off to be smelted and reused."

It is an unusual, labor-intensive approach for a U.S. recycler, but Brundage believes it is best for the environment and a smart competitive move for his company's future.

His 250,000-square-foot facility employs about 15 full-time disassemblers, up from a half-dozen 18 months ago. Brundage expects he will employ about 50 within two years.

Intercon takes electronic waste from large businesses, including Texas Instruments Inc. and Ericsson Wireless Communications. It also serves large government agencies such as the Department of Energy.

While European countries have stringent regulations that require recycling, government mandates in the United States are less demanding, said Tom Theis, director of the environmental science and policy institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the United States, large corporations are at the forefront in pushing for electronics recycling.

Corporate managers also want to be sure that sensitive information stored in hard drives never winds up in the wrong hands once old electronics are scrapped.

Practices at Ericsson are likely typical in this regard. Before a piece of electronics is retired, managers assess what kind of information it might have processed and how much still might be stored, said Tom Przelomiec, the company's national materials disposition manager.

"We don't resell our old equipment because we don't want even a little chance of it being put to use with any data in it," he said.

The company installs commands to wipe hard drives clean and then sends the old machines to Intercon Solutions, where the recycler keeps records of when the old equipment arrived, when it is dismantled and when and where the constituent parts are sent to be melted for reuse.

"We need to track it from start to finish," Przelomiec said, "so we can ensure that everything was done responsibly both for data security and for the environment."

Intercon has sought and received certification of its processes from the International Standards Organization. For many firms that do business in Europe, the ISO certification is a must-have.

Because toxic materials such as lead, mercury and other heavy metals are used liberally in making electronics devices, burying them in landfills poses a future hazard if the metals leak into ground water.

Experts estimate that only 10 percent to 15 percent of electronic waste is recycled. Most of that comes from large companies that get rid of old machines in bulk.

Consumers who dispose of a computer or TV set every few years are likely to just set it out with the trash.

Brundage said that every day he gets four or five consumers who drive to his plant to leave a few old computers, TV sets or stereos.

"We always take anything from anyone," he said, "although our business is working with large companies."

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