Romeoville, IL-based Vintage Tech Recyclers recently become a part of EPA’s newly created Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Challenge, hosting a kickoff event in September. Vintage Tech Recyclers, an electronics recycling and asset recovery company, processes, picks up and creates recycling programs for any industry—residential, business and other markets across the U.S. Starting in 2005, recycling 80,000 pounds, they now have 168 employees and will recycle 50,000,000 pounds this year. Along with Romeoville, the company has two sites in the Chicagoland area, one in Kansas City, one going into Detroit and two more sites to be completed by Spring. Karrie Gibson, Vintage Tech Recyclers’ CEO spoke about EPA’s SMM program and what it means for the recycling industry.
What is the Sustainable Materials Management Electronics Challenge? EPA’s three- year SMM program was designed to advance responsible management of used electronics from retailers and OEMs. For any electronics that have been manufactured, those that are in the marketplace and any electronic components, the SMM is asking these OEMs to use certified electronic recyclers. This recycling certification is a very important part of this program and to everything that recyclers do. For example, there is a lot of sham recycling going on in the scrap metal business. Scrap metal is sent overseas to China, Nigeria and other countries. We are just disposing our waste there and making it someone else’s problem. There are 3,000 recyclers and 300 that have chosen to be certified, so the other 2,700 are doing whatever they want with the material. With this program, these manufacturers will work with certified companies, which means that their downstreams can be viewed at any given time, there are flowcharts in place, environmental health and safety in place, and they are not sending things to developing countries—everything is monitored. EPA put this challenge out there to manufacturers and OEMs to say, “Hey, we would like you to sign onto this program as a gold or silver sponsor.” This means these support the program up to 100 percent. At the kickoff event that we hosted in September, big companies like Staples, Best Buy, Samsung, Sony, Sprint, Sharp, LG, Panasonic, etc. were in attendance and they all signed up as gold sponsors. They will be dedicated to recycling 100 percent of the electronics that they put out there with certified recyclers.
How is Vintage Tech involved? Right now, our company holds dual certifications from R2 and e-Stewards;we are one of only 10 percent of recyclers nationwide that have these. Therefore, we are holding up our end of program by servicing manufacturers and OEMs through recycling their electronics responsibly.
Why is the SMM program and these steps for electronic recycling so important? One thing that’s really important for certified electronic recyclers is to really be able to step up. It does cost money to be certified upfront and to put the right processes in place that are responsible enough to protect our environment and the health and safety of our employees. You are really investing in the right way to do it. Unfortunately, when you have 2,700 who are shipping recycling material overseas, companies like ours can’t look into investing millions of dollars of equipment. So, this is a good gesture on the EPA’s part to make sure that people are doing it right, keeping recycling material here in the States and not exporting jobs as well.
Are there any laws in place currently? There are 26 states, including Illinois, that have e-scrap legislation in place that bans this type of material going to a landfill. No longer can residents set it on the curb and let the garbage man take it. Every state except for CA has a compliance goal that many manufacturers have to abide by, so if you are selling your recycling material in our state, you have to pay a fee as well as find a program to sell the material into the marketplace. This is how they are getting these electronics cleaned up a little bit by controlling and documenting the waste. Scrap metal has hazard elements to it, including lead, cadmium and mercury it has to be controlled since they are ten times worse than regular garbage. It has to be monitored and handled correctly.
If a company were interested in joining this program, how would they be able to do so? The OEMS have all been educated by the EPA and if you are a recycler and certified, you are already on the EPA’s list of certified recyclers. On the other hand, in order to become one, recyclers can visit www.R2solutions.org or www.estewards.org and research or begin the process. www.estewards.org is a much stronger certification and protects companies, employees and the integrity of the material being handled responsibly.
What is the next step for this program? Right now, this area is fairly new when it comes to legislation since all of these laws have just been put into place—most of them in 2009 and a couple of them in 2005. Now federal bans on exporting e-scrap are being looked at. However, for the time being, the SMM program will allow manufacturers, OEMs and recyclers to recycle material voluntarily and responsibly. The ultimate goal is to develop something that works with certified electronic recyclers and to be able to see their downstream flow, see that everything is documented and reported, etc. so we can see where all this material is going. This program will be studied, so when they are ready to create a federal law based on this (there is already one on the table right now), it gives them more data to go on.
For more information about Vintage Tech Recyclers, visit www.vintagetechrecyclers.com.For information about the SMM Challenge, visit www.epa.gov/smm.