Computer recycling Recycling
Recycling
  1. Intercon makes the list for top facebook page
  2. Intercon's Rapid Growth featured in Modesto Bee
  3. Intercon and CEO Brian Brundage featured in Green Manufacturer Magazine and Online
  4. Federal guidelines needed and Intercon Solutions leading the way - Platts
  5. Financial News Network and Intercon Solutions
  6. CEO, Brian Brundage featured on the Epodcastnetwork.com
  7. Intercon Solutions featured in Adweek
  8. Intercon Solutions compared to Google and Facebook - MSNBC
  9. Intercon CEO featured on MSN Careers and Career Builder
  10. Bit By Bit - Intercon Solutions featured in Recycling Today.
  11. Intercon Solutions featured on Save my Planet, part of the Live Well National HD Network
  12. Intercon featured in "This week in Chicago" Time Out Chicago
  13. Earth911 - What really happens to your ewaste
  14. Computer User - THE RESPONSIBLE LEADER IN e-WASTE RECYCLING
  15. Intercon Solutions featured in The Wall Street Journal
  16. Illinois Passes Lofty E-cycling Legislation
  17. SkinInc: Intercon Solutions is greening the spa and salon industry
  18. Maximum PC - The Story of E-Waste and Intercon Solutions
  19. CBS - Protect against Identity Theft with Intercon Solutions
  20. ABC Live Green with Hosea Sanders “Truly Green Recycling – Intercon Solutions”
  21. Recycling Today - Intercon recycles EPS, foam and light gauge plastics
  22. Intercon Solutions featured speaker at Upcoming Indiana Recycling Coalition Conference
  23. Spring Cleaning with Intercon Solutions - in Computer User
  24. Intercon Uses Reverse Engineering to Recycle Styrofoam
  25. Are You in the Pallet or the Recycling Business? Introducing E-Recycling: The Fastest Growing Segment of the Recycling Industry
  26. Company designs machine to recycle polystyrene
  27. MSPAlliance Launches E-Recycling Program for Global Membership
  28. ABC Action News - Intercon Processes for green awareness and e-waste recycling drive
  29. Investors Business Daily - Leaders & Success - Intercon Solutions
  30. Chicago Tonight /WTTW Channel 11 - Intercon Solutions processing for the manufacturing industry
  31. Deborah’s Place 2010
  32. Recycling Today.com – Intercon Solutions Receives OHSAS 18001 Certification
  33. TBO.com – Recycling electronics today
  34. Intercon Solutions goes to the forefront of Safety
  35. WGN – DTV Transition Special - Recycling
  36. Tossing out your old TV, Properly
  37. Intercon takes giant steps to save the environment
  38. Intercon Representative Ossie Ally Helps Innisbrook Go Green on Fox 13
  39. The Recycling Newspaper – American Recycler features Intercon Solutions
  40. International Herald Tribune / Global Edition of the New York Times / Featured Top Processor - Intercon Solutions
  41. The Green Way to Throw out E-Waste, NBC National Evening News with Brian Williams
  42. Chicago Tribune - Old ways of destroying electronic waste are being thrown out
  43. TV Recycling that is good for environment.  ABC 7 - Chicago
  44. Top Processor Intercon Solutions recycles for Wisconsin
  45. Computer Clean Up – E-cycling Near You
  46. SouthTown Star - Intercon handles E-Waste Spring Clean Up Event
  47. Star Tribune - Minnesota / Intercon is a solution
  48. Shape Magazine - Green is the new pretty
  49. Label it: The Earth Day Challenge – Whitley County
  50. Schererville Community News – What do I do with my old electronics?
  51. Chicago SunTimes.com - Intercon Solutions nominated for Innovation Award
  52. Discovery Channel - Things we love to hate
  53. Chicago Sun Times August 2007
  54. Intercon Solutions Plans Program to Raise Environmental Awareness
  55. The News Tribune.com - Every speck of your trash is this company's treasure
  56. American Recycler - A Closer Look
  57. Recycling Today - Disassembly Line
  58. The Today Show with Lester Holt
  59. Interactive Media - It's Not Easy Being Green
  60. May 11th, 2007 - WYCC-TV
  61. The Norman Transcript.com - Chicago Heights recycler reverses manufacturing
  62. A Handbook for Earth Friendly Living by Crissy Trask - It's Easy Being Green
  63. Columbia Tribune.com - Electronics recycler stays ahead of U.S. curve
  64. Chicago Business.com - On the Other End of the Line
  65. Waste News.com - Intercon Solutions names Travis Griggs wireless recycling chief
  66. Recycling Today?s Plastics Recycling Conference - Electronic Recovery
  67. Electronic waste piling up in Illinois, around the world
  68. Office and Commercial Real Estate Magazine - Recycling Electronics
  69. The Business Connection - A Message from the President
  70. E-Prairie.com - We Recycle Aluminum Cans, Plastic; Why Not Cell Phones, Computers?
  71. Intercon Solutions to Update Facility
  72. Firm turns recycling practices up a notch
  73. Fermilab "Best in Class" for Program to Reduce E-waste
  74. Public Works Magazine - The cost of e-waste
  75. DailySouthTown.com - Electronics recycling
  76. TechOnLine.com - Recycling e-waste
  77. Crain's Chicago Business - Stamp of approval
  78. Chicago Sun-Times - P.C. PC disposal
  79. Biz Tech Magazine - Forgotten, But Not Gone
  80. First Business - Profit from Old PC's
  81. Recycling Today - Intercon Solutions adds plant
  82. The Star - Electronic recycler expands with move to Chicago Heights
  83. Chicago Sun-Times - De-Lightful Move
  84. Solid Waste & Recycling - Intercon Solutions moves US plant
  85. Waste News.com - Illinois e-waste recycler moves to new facility, expands capacity
  86. RecyclingToday.com - Electronics Recycler Opens New Facility
  87. Information Security & Product Destruction News - Electronics Recovery
  88. ICCM Weekly - Environmental CRM: Toward a Corporate "Recycling Mindset" for Retired Assets
  89. UPI Technology News - Old mobile phones a hazard
  90. Red Streak - Old PCs not just high-tech landfill fodder
  91. Norton E-Zine - Are Recycled PCs Harming the Earth?
  92. IAER Electronics Recycling Newsletter
  93. Tin Technology - Making a business out of e-waste
  94. Fermilab - Recycle Electronic Waste
  95. RecyclingToday.com - Intercon Solutions Launches Online Electronics Recycling Resource
  96. CBS2chicago.com - High Tech Trash
  97. Waste News - E-recycling Industry Continues Evolution
  98. Crain's Chicago Business - Intercon Solutions Recycling Division
  99. Business Xpansion Journal - Recycling Old Computers?
  100. The Star Newspaper - Donate or recycle those old computers
  101. Computer Dealer News - Canada's e-waste problem needs a cleanup
  102. TechTarget.com News - Where old servers go to die
  103. An intimate look at being "green"
  104. Brian Brundage, CEO

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Making the digital switch? Toss your old TV set properly

May 31, 2009

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK, Staff Writer

The guts of an old television set look like a bunch of junk.

There's a heavy glass screen, a bunch of plastic plugs and a jumble of wires tucked inside a wooden or plastic cabinet. A cathode ray tube, the key to the picture, hides more glass, a metal frame and up to 8 pounds of lead.

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The digital television turnover had to be extended four months to June 12 partly because the program providing coupons for converter boxes ran out of money.

Thousands of people who applied for the $40 converter coupons at the end of last year were put on waiting lists, informed they likely wouldn't get them in time for the original Feb. 17 conversion.

And without the boxes, analog TVs that rely on antennas to pick up over-the-air signals won't work.

A proposed $650 million was added to the initial $1.5 billion fund subsidizing the boxes, which will be needed by anyone with an old TV set that does not have cable or a satellite system, ala one that relies on rabbit ears.

The money pays for the converters, a free help hot line at (888) 225-5322 (888-CALL FCC), and no-cost house calls to anyone who can't manage to set up a converter box with telephone help from the FCC.

Despite the delay, a May 21 digital test-run by the Federal Communications Commission turned up more problems in the Chicago area than in any other market.

And some 3.3 million people nationwide still don't have a digital-ready television, according to the Nielsen Co.

So, if you need help or still have questions about digital broadcasting, call (888) 225-5322, or log on to DTV.gov or DTVanswers.com.

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Nothing will prevent Southlanders from chucking old sets once the June 12 switch changes broadcast signals to digital, when analog TVs, the kind with the tube inside rather than a digital tuner, become obsolete. Curbside garbage pickup grabs electronics, too. State law doesn't yet prevent electronic trash - or e-waste - from going to the landfill.

Not that couch potatoes are rushing to toss their old analogs en masse, since cable watchers will experience a seamless conversion. Many others with tube TVs opted for converter boxes, which at about $50 or $60 come cheaper than a new digital TV.

Still, to mistake any of those old TVs as trash is shortsighted.

The guts of a TV can be hazardous if not treated properly. They take up a lot of space as trash. And they're valuable as raw materials when recycled.

They're also gold to a Chicago Heights company, which will transform those insides into ingredients purchased by American manufacturers.

Salvaging everything possible

Walls of old console TVs stand inside Intercon Solutions' giant warehouse, piled up 10 feet tall on an industrial floor still scarred with steel rails from when the Washington Street building contained railroad cars.

Shrink-wrapped on wide pallets, TVs in bulky wood consoles and colored plastic cases alike await disassembly in a process Intercon Solutions calls "demanufacturing." Pieces get unscrewed, unhooked, unfastened, all by hand, in the opposite order of their manufacture. The parts are then sorted by materials and packaged for shipping to a series of manufacturers within the United States (but none in Illinois).

Nearby, workers are dismantling old telecommunications consoles from the outside in, while conveyor belts sit silent, full of plastic calculators from another shift. And a carton of old film unspooled from Defense Department reels waits to be stripped of its silver.

Mark Medic of Intercon said this recycling process is tidier than shredding, and keeps hazardous materials from contaminating the ground. Intercon doesn't resell working gadgets overseas for consumer reuse. And they put nothing into landfills, he said.

This is important because the lead alone in TVs causes health problems when released haphazardly into the environment. Other heavy metals like mercury and cadmium - found in the TV tubes - also can contaminate groundwater. Mercury causes birth defects and damages the central nervous system. Lead poisoning often leads to learning disabilities in children. And cadmium irreversibly damages kidneys and lungs, and softens bones.

Intercon pulls the lead components out of the sets and sends them downstate where the metal is smelted out. The smelters get the glass, too, which they use to help regulate the heat of the smelting process.

The lead is resold to electronics companies, mostly for use as solder. Wood from cabinets is chipped up for particle board. And the plastics become plastic lumber and parking bumpers.

And the more metals that can be salvaged from junk, the fewer that must be mined underground.

You don't want to fill the landfill

Intercon charges for recycling dropoffs. Several times a year, the company partners with area municipalities who pay the fees, which start at $10 and depend on the size of the set.

"You don't want to fill the landfill with (hazardous materials), you don't want to fill the landfill anyway," said Marta Keane, a recycling specialist at the Will County Land Use Department. "Once it's full, we have to make a new one somewhere else. So why fill it up with televisions just because we're going to switch to digital?"

Illinois passed a law in September requiring manufacturers to take back e-waste and recycle it, said Dave Walters, a waste reduction manager at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. The law starts to take effect in 2010, and by 2012, all TVs, computer monitors and printers, and other electronics will be banned from the landfill stream.

"The new Illinois law is really much broader than other states," Walters said. "It's the first piece of legislation that includes printers."

About 20 states have some kind of e-waste laws, most of which are recycling programs rather than bans on landfills.

"So I would not say we're late in coming to the game," Walters said. "We're ahead of the curve than in other states."

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

 

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