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E-waste
and appliances begin to overlap
The word “appliance” in its strictest sense
is a piece of equipment for adapting a tool or machine for a
special purpose. In common vernacular it has come to mean a broad
spectrum of household and industrial electromechanical devices
too broad to enumerate here. The products span everything from
a hair curling iron to multi-ton rooftop air conditioners.
The household appliance industry divides
appliances into three broad categories: 1) Major white-goods
such as refrigerators, freezers and ranges. 2) Portable appliances
which include kitchen countertop units, home comfort products
like air conditioners, fans, alarms, humidifiers and personal
care products like hair dryers and electric tooth brushes. 3)
Floor care units such as vacuum cleaners, extractors, steamers
and central vacuum systems.
That, of course, does not include handheld
or stationary power tools, central air conditioners, water heaters,
and myriad other electromechanical devices that have penetrated
the home and workplace which are also considered “appliances.”
While 23 states presently have electronic
waste regulations, it would appear that not many have specifically
addressed the recycling of household appliances. Hazardous materials
harbored in appliances such as refrigerants and mercury are governed
by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for
collection and disposal.
Appliances generally contain a small fraction,
by weight, of what are defined as traditional e-wastes such as
cathode ray tubes, flat screens and printed circuit boards. Appliances
do have electrical plugs and wires, and some are battery powered.
Many have electric motors and are valued by recyclers for laminated
steel housing and copper. And the materials they are made of
– metals and many plastics – have good scrap market value.
Compared to consumer and IT electronics,
however, appliance circuitry is generally simpler and more basic;
a switch, perhaps a small circuit board, wires and a few electronic
components. Yet, it is there. And, as appliances become smarter,
there will be more of what some consider “e-wastes,” but still
not a significant proportion compared to other materials of which
they are made.
In the coming years, however, large and small
appliances will likely be adding electronic weight. This will
occur as more user-friendly features like touch-screen displays,
scanners and sensors are added with the emergence of smart-appliances.
Utilities across the country have already
installed millions of smart-meters, and more are on the way.
Smart-appliances are beginning to enter the market to interface
with smart-meters. They will incorporate demand response modules
to give consumers, and in many cases utilities, the ability to
program or remotely control appliances to reduce electric consumption
and take advantage of lower time-of-use rates.
GE and other manufacturers are already offering
smart-appliances. Early entries into the marketplace use separate
demand response modules, wireless transceivers which plug into
the back of the appliance and work with installed electronics
and software, but as the technology advances it will eventually
be built-in to the appliances themselves.
In Europe, the Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment Directive (WEEE) was well intentioned. It imposed the
responsibility for the disposal of waste electrical and electronic
equipment on product manufacturers, but has been unevenly implemented
and led to bickering and a slew of lawsuits.
Governments imposing responsibility was the
easy part. Building the infrastructure to collect, transport
and recycle materials in an ecologically-friendly manner, pay
for it and fairly allocate costs among the participants has proven
much more difficult. Return rates as measured by recent studies
show that the WEEE system may not be the best approach.
Under a new law that takes effect on April
1, 2011 consumers in British Columbia will be able to return
small appliances to municipal collection centers that will be
set up around the province, or to as yet undetermined points.
In one of the most ambitious programs of its type in North America,
small appliances will be collected, transported and processed
in an environmentally sound manner. The 2011 deadline is an extension
of existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations
that applied to electronic products. Details on how small appliances
will be exactly handled are still being worked out, and the devil
is in the details as WEEE discovered.
A trend appears to have emerged – as current
electronics waste regulations spread among the states they may
eventually be extended to encompass electrical devices and appliances.
But regulations covering major appliances
may not be necessary because American recyclers are already doing
an effective job and some municipal recycling programs are recovering
large and small appliances with obvious scrap metal value.
A top appliance industry executive long involved
with end-of-life appliance issues said, “Most white goods are
dealt with very efficiently in the solid waste stream by either
retail return programs, municipal recycling programs or entrepreneurs.
In the States we believe that there’s about a 90 percent recycle
rate for white goods. In Canada, studies have shown that over
95 percent of major appliances enter the recycling stream at
end of life.”
An older refrigerator ready for recycling,
for instance, yields a fraction of one percent in e-waste, yet
it must be handled by a recycler certified to handle hazardous
wastes regulated under the Clean Air Act. When accumulated, the
scant electronics, motors and plastics yield some value that
help offset recycling costs. Recyclers still recover Freon, clean
it and recycle for use in older vehicles, but that market is
fading away as those vehicles disappear. The primary income to
white goods recyclers comes from selling scrap metal and disposal
fees.
Terry Zeien, owner of J.R.’s Advanced Recycling
Services, based in Minneapolis, has been recycling appliances
in the upper Midwestern states since 1988. “We don’t work with
utilities, or manufacturers, mostly private sector and the government.
Typically, our customers are everyone in a state. We service
households to rental units to anyone dealing in appliances or
have an appliance they want to dispose of, including municipal
recycling facilities and county agencies.”
As a state certified appliance recycler,
J.R.’s collects appliances with its own trucks or customers ship
them to its processing facility. “There’s some degree of electronics
in most everything nowadays. We do a huge amount of residential
from waste haulers and from homes as well. In Minnesota, it typically
costs $30 to pick up one item at a home. You pick it up because
that’s part of your job, not just for the scrap, but providing
a service to dispose of it in an environmentally sound and legal
way.”
When an appliance arrives at J.R.’s, it is
evaluated to determine if the unit is new enough to have resale
value. “We only refurbish two to three percent of our volume.
We have two retail stores, one in Minnesota and one in Iowa,
where we repair and put them back on the market. People are looking
for better bargains on appliances. If you can buy a washer for
$200 versus $500, what would you do? We do mostly mechanical
repairs and offer a six-month parts and labor warrantee, a strong
one. If an appliance lasts six months it usually lasts a long
time.”
Appliances to be scrapped at J.R.’s are inspected
for refrigerants and other hazardous wastes which are removed.
Freon is tapped into cylinders, cleaned and resold. Mercury is
recycled and PCBs are disposed of in an environmentally safe
way. Motors and compressors go to a metal recycler. Electronic
components are shipped out to an e-waste processor. Steel is
sent to a local mill where it is shredded and made into rebar
for highway construction.
“It’s our private policy that all our recycled
metal stays in Minnesota. None is exported. We have tough environmental
laws in Minnesota, are certified by state to handle hazardous
wastes and inspected heavily by the Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency,” said Zeien.
Edward R. Cameron, CEO of Appliance Recycling
Centers of America, Inc. (ARCA), said, “We work mostly with electric
utilities and manufacturers and have operations in 20 states
and in Canada and Mexico. We go any place a utility will sponsor
an appliance recovery and recycling program.”
In a typical ARCA-sponsored program, the
electric utility offers a cash incentive for customers to turn
in an old, working, inefficient refrigerator or freezer. “Utilities
advertise to consumers, and in some cases we do, that if they
have a working, energy inefficient refrigerator over 10 years
old, they can call a number, have it picked up for free and be
sent an incentive check ranging from $25 to $50 dollars, depending
on the specific program.”
ARCA provides a complete service and is considered
a partner because they represent the utility. They operate a
call center, schedule the pickups, dispatch trucks, bring the
appliance to their recycling center, do the proper recycling
of the appliance and send the customer the incentive check. “Then
we bill the utility for our services,” Cameron noted.
“Any circuit boards we take out, we send
to electronic recyclers. We give them that and they give us some
metals, so we like to work with the e-recyclers. In the future,
appliances will start being hooked up to the internet. We are
also starting to see electronic boards in washers and other major
appliances that are using touch screens. I think we are going
to see growth in that area.”
“I think most small portable appliances wind
up in landfills. I don’t know of any program in the United States
that sorts them out of the solid waste stream,” said Rick Meyers,
a recycling specialist at the City of Milwaukee Department of
Public Works. “We don’t have a recovery program specific to portable
appliances. If it’s an item that can be recovered as scrap metal
then it’s part of our scrap metal recovery at our collection
sites, but otherwise the only appliances we have programs for
are the ones that have related regulations, certainly anything
with refrigerants.”
“We do have a substantial electronics recycling
program that’s been going for ten years. It was always just computer-related
electronics until this years’ new Wisconsin law added TVs and
other entertainment related items. It doubled our volume. As
of September, 2010 there’s a landfill ban on residential computer
related and entertainment electronics covered under the bill,”
said Meyers.
As in most jurisdictions, Milwaukee does
not mention portable appliances in their public information.
Aside from curbside collection of cans, bottles and paper, most
all small appliances go into the trash and there is no hand sorting
in Milwaukee to pull them out.
“The infrastructure is there with the electronics
recyclers and they could physically process and market materials
from portable appliances, but there’s not much of an economic
driver for that and there’s no producer responsibility bill covering
those the way there is for electronic waste,” Meyers concluded.
Several e-recyclers were asked about small
appliances. Most do not handle or solicit them and turn them
away at collection events. Companies like Total Reclaim are taking
a more proactive approach. Over the past decade, Total Reclaim
has established a state-of-the-art, high-capacity electronics
recycling facilities in Seattle, Washington with satellite operations
in Oregon and Alaska. The company offers a variety of environmental
services for the management of electronics and other hard-to-handle
materials, including fluorescent lamps, refrigerant gases and
appliances.
Craig Lorch, co-owner, was asked about the
future of small appliance recycling. He said, “I view it as the
direction that things are going. If we look at the European Union
and Canada with different product stewardship programs there’s
a movement towards doing more and more devices. The recently
enacted New York law for electronics is more comprehensive than
any law before it. No question about it, state regulators and
local waste officials are looking at how they can get more material
out of their waste stream, how they can reduce toxicity or just
make their landfills last longer.”
Total Reclaim is in the process of evaluating
new equipment to better handle small appliances and is looking
in Europe, Canada and Asia for ideas. Currently they are dismantled
by hand. Lorch estimated that small appliances represent from
one to two percent of current volume because there are no recycling
mandates and few opportunities for substantial collections. “The
challenges are huge: mixed or unidentifiable plastics, and the
potential for batteries deep in equipment and devices that were
never meant to be taken apart.”
Fees for disposal at Total Reclaim vary and
depend on volume. They are a drop-off site for the Washington
e-waste collection program and receive small quantities of small
appliances mixed in with electronic gear. Customers wanting to
recycle portable appliances are charged $.25 to $.30 per pound
depending on the item.
“For small appliances, there’s interest on
the side of the waste reduction and recycling advocates that
say don’t throw this stuff away, and there’s interest on the
part of anti-exporting advocates for materials to be managed
domestically. From a resource perspective, there’s only so much
copper on the planet and we should be able to do a better job
with what we have already mined. There’s a lot of material out
there and with some improvements in efficiency a lot of it can
be handled,” Lorch concluded.
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