[tinwhiskers] Trade in electronic scrap grows as recycling laws expand
- From: "Bob Landman" <rlandman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <tinwhiskers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:31:43 -0400
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/bustech/story.html?id=7e29c92a-a87c-408d-99d1-367b94962c1d
Trade in electronic scrap grows as recycling laws expand
Lynn Moore, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 02, 2008
MONTREAL - The trade in "e-scrap" -- metal-laden waste from computers,
cellphones and other electronic gear -- is growing, thanks to the boom in
electronics and rapidly expanding recycling laws.
Among the players moving to make the most of the new commodity is international
mining firm Xstrata PLC, whose Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., is already
one of the world's largest consumers of e-scrap.
Parts of the smelter are now undergoing an expansion so it can double its
e-scrap processing capacity to 100,000 tonnes by 2010, said Paul Healey,
manager of recycling for Xstrata Copper.
When the volume of shredded circuit boards and related materials arriving at
Horne began to tip the scales at 50,000 tonnes a year, backlogs developed at
the smelter, he said.
"There are now some bottlenecks in the front-end of the process -- how we
receive material, unload it and sample it," Mr. Healey said. "The expansion
focuses on the processes that allows us to receive and handle the scrap."
Decades ago, Quebec's only copper smelter got much of its raw materials from
the Abitibi Greenstone mineral belt that runs through the region, but the
company has had to look further afield for material in recent years.
Recycling now provides 15 per cent of the Horne smelter's incoming material
annually and a substantial amount of Horne's recycled material is derived from
industrial processes that use copper or precious metals as catalysts, Mr.
Healey said.
The scrap travels to Rouyn-Noranda from around the world, much of it from
Europe where recycling laws have been coming on stream, and from Asia.
In Europe, virtually everything with a circuit board or motor -- including
vacuum cleaners -- is picked over. Some estimates say that Europeans produce 20
kilograms per person of waste from electronic devices and appliances every year.
This summer, Ontario announced a waste electrical and electronic program that
will impose a recycling fee for discarded computer equipment and television
sets.
The fees, effective next April, will be charged to manufacturers. Similar fees
exist in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.
In Quebec, various government departments and Recyc-Québec, a government
agency, have a program that has seen about 34,000 pieces of computer equipment
dropped off at bureau stores, which then turn them over to training centres
that either repair the equipment for use in schools or recycle the components.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
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