Industry News

Source: Meriden Record Journal

Recycling Company Finds a Green Niche

By: Andrew Perlot, Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD -- Beset by competitors with lower standards and an ambivalent federal government, and sometimes overlooked by cash-strapped municipalities, electronics recycler WeRecycle! Inc. has managed to create a profitable niche for itself by serving those who value being green, or at least think it's important to appear so.

If piled up, the 315 to 600 million computers approaching obsolescence in this country would create a mile high, six-acre mountain of polluting silicon and circuit boards, according to industry estimates.

These computers, and the rest of the electronic waste that Americans produce, is likely to be disassembled improperly or just thrown out with the regular trash, WeRecycle! Chief Operating Officer Gina Chiarella said. They can contaminate the environment with many toxic elements. Often the waste is shipped overseas to countries like China or India, with lax environmental regulations.

"There is a problem in the industry in municipal collections," Chiarella said. "The majority of electronics that are recycled, 80 percent, are exported to Third World countries. People in developing countries want usable electronics. What they don't have is an infrastructure to handle the potentially toxic elements."

Less than 6 percent of the e-waste sent overseas is intact and usable, Chiarella said. Most of the rest is scavenged with methods most Americans would not consider recycling at all. Businesses there pay to import the waste, but after stripping the electronics of valuable components such as copper wiring, they discard the rest, including toxic elements like the six pounds of lead present in every computer monitor.

The town of Guiyu, China, and some of the suburbs of New Delhi have become so contaminated by this waste that the water is no longer drinkable, according to Chiarella. China and India have banned the importation of e-waste, but huge coastlines, a lack of resources and corrupt officials make these bans impractical to enforce. The U.S. government has not banned e-waste exportation.

WeRecycle!'s main recycling facility is at 500 S. Broad St. in Meriden, and its headquarters is at 30 North Plains Industrial Road in Wallingford. The company is expanding into New York.

The problem for WeRecycle!, Chiarella said, is trying to compete against companies that will collect e-waste for little or nothing, because they don't process the material at all, but just put it into a shipping crate. "It's sham recyclers," she said. "Sham recyclers get most of their recycling from municipal collections. Some of them don't even know what they're doing is devastating the environment."

Municipalities will sometimes choose the cheapest recycling company, not bothering to ask where the waste goes, though this is changing as environmental issues continue to come to the forefront. Though Chiarella says that WeRecycle! works with a number of Connecticut towns, many overlook her company because it charges for its recycling services.

"We can't compete with free," she says. WeRecycle! first manually removes anything harmful, and then salvages everything it can. This process requires them to employ a staff of workers and truck drivers, but Chiarella says the environmental difference is what's important.

Meriden, Wallingford and Cheshire are members of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, a quasi-public agency that handles e-waste recycling for a number of Connecticut towns. Thomas P. Gaffey, director of recycling and contract enforcement for the CRRA, as well as a state senator from Meriden, says the organization checks out the recyclers it hires through a competitive bidding process to make sure the materials are really being recycled. WeRecycle! once bid for a contract with CRRA, Gaffey said, but a recycler from Pennsylvania won out.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's office has not received any complaints about e -waste recyclers, but he said that recycling claims can be misleading.

"One of the growing problems with the whole environmentally friendly consumer movement is that it has expanded so widely as now to be a source of possible deception and even fraud," he said. "Proper recycling is a concern, because all too often people assume that the word 'recycle' means that disposal will be completely proper and environmentally acceptable. The word 'recycle' can cover a multitude of different practices. We're concerned that there is no clear definition of 'recycle'. Consumers may be misled by companies that use it to cover practices that wouldn't be acceptable."

The state General Assembly passed a bill in the last legislative session requiring e-waste collection by certified recyclers. WeRecycle! is hoping that, if it is signed into law by the governor, the certification requirements will be very demanding.

"What we're hoping with this legislation is that they look at the downstream due diligence," Chiarella said.

The governor is expected to sign the bill, according to state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy. It would give the DEP everything it needs to enforce strict standards, McCarthy said, adding that the final destination of waste was a big part of the debate in the General Assembly. "A lot of concern was about it being shipped over seas," she said. "We feel that the bill gives us significant leverage. I think that it will be very legitimate and high quality."

There is generally thought to be huge potential for growth in e-waste recycling, both in Connecticut and the rest of the nation. An estimated 2.63 million tons of e-waste is discarded every year, according to Chiarella, but only 12.5 percent of that is collected for any sort of recycling. The other 87.5 percent ends up in landfills and incinerators.

"Seventy percent of mercury in landfills can be tied back to improper disposal," Chiarella said.

Corporations, often hardware producing companies with large amounts of e-waste, are WeRecycle!'s biggest customers. Chiarella says that companies want their brand names associated with environmental stewardship, not linked to reports of industrial pollution.

WeRecycle! is also expanding its municipal operation and recently built a facility in Mount Vernon, N.Y., with a $500,000 grant from Westchester County. The county, tired of waiting for the federal or state government to step in with stricter standards, decided to create standards of its own, which James Hogan, director of government affairs for WeRecycle!, said his company happens to fit.

Hogan was recycling director in Westchester County for 18 years. He organized the first e-waste collection in the area, and has since been working to bring about stricter recycling standards.

"Every week it seems like another state is adopting legislation," he said. "We get better every day. Go back two years and think about where we were."

Still, there is only so much that municipal and state governments can do. Only the federal government can ban the exportation of e-waste, for instance, due its control over trade policy. Recyclers and Fortune 500 companies are attempting to sway the government, but are making little progress.

"What we really need is some high standards with a certification program," said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator for the Computer Take Back Campaign, a non-government organization. "Sadly, the EPA is one of the people at the table trying to keep the bar low."

The EPA declined a request for an interview, but provided a written statement which said that the agency was active in a number of recycling organizations and councils, and worked on setting guidelines for e-waste recycling.

"The guidelines include provisions not only to assure that domestic facilities use practices consistent with the guidelines, but also assure that export of e-waste is for legitimate and environmentally sound purposes," according to the statement.

Whether or not the rest of the country comes along for the ride, WeRecycle! officials say they are happy to have a positive impact.

"When you're in an emerging industry," Hogan said, "and you have an opportunity to help your neighbor and the environment by going to work, that's pretty satisfying."

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