Fermilab "Best in Class" for Program to Reduce E-wast
According to the EPA, as many as 500 million personal computers will be thrown away between 2000 and 2007. Last year, Fermilab reused and recycled 200,000 pounds of electronics that would have otherwise gone into a landfill.
As last year's gadgets turn into this year's trash, landfills get more crammed with electronic junk. "E-waste is one of those problem items," said Eric Mieland, Fermilab recycling coordinator. "It contains cadmium, lead and mercury--toxic things you don't want to see in landfills."
Mieland says that Fermilab is working hard to eliminate e-waste. "The Property Office has created a lab-wide effort to reuse and recycle old electronics, which eliminated 200,000 pounds of e-waste last year alone," he said. This "e-cycling" program has been so successful that it won the DOE Office of Science Best in Class Pollution Prevention Award for 2006, and put Fermilab in the running for a White House Closing the Circle award, which recognizes federal facilities that have made significant contributions to improving the environment.
There are a few key ingredients to Fermilab's e-cycling success: In addition to a recycling education program and a waste dumpster surveillance program, which ensures that unauthorized items such as printed circuit boards are not left in on-site dumpsters, Fermilab has a comprehensive strategy for transferring electronics that can no longer be used for their original purpose to people who need them. "Say a computer is exceessed from directorate," said Jack Kelly, Fermilab's Inventory Control manager. "But someone else at the lab realizes they can still use that old computer to run their applications." That employee, says Kelly, can come down to the site 38 Property Management warehouse and find what they need. The warehouse holds everything from old oscilloscopes to last year's laptop. About 15 percent of Fermilab's personal computers are reused this way each year, and others are donated to local schools or listed on a government website, GSAExess.com, which seeks a new home for electronics at other federal agencies.
If the equipment in question cannot be reused as is, there is a second line of defense to becoming landfill material. It is sent to a de-manufacturing company called Intercon Solutions that finds yet more uses for it. Kelly says that Intercon helps him recycle everything from the plastic in a computer monitor to the integrated chips on a PC board. "They even melt the lead film from computer monitors so they can recycle the glass and properly dispose of the lead," he said.
All of these efforts have helped Fermilab cut down on costs--creating a near "cost neutral" disposal program, according to Mieland--in addition to scoring the lab "best in class" for greatly reducing e-waste. "Congratulations Fermilab," said Sally Arnold, DOE Environmental Scientist. "Winning the Best-in-Class category is distinctive indeed."
—Siri Steiner
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