2016 Recycling Confex Middle East: Think before you shred
2016 Recycling Confex Middle East: Think before you shred
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Companies involved in the shredding of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) around the world, even those who have invested heavily in WEEE shredding plants, are paying greater attention to repair, reuse and resale markets, according to presenters at the WEEE processing session at the 2016 Recycling Confex Middle East, which took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in early December.
“Shredders are no longer the solution for every device,” declared Stephen Phelan, managing director in the Middle East for Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS), a company that operates shredding plants for WEEE materials in several nations.
Phelan said customers for SRS’ ITAD (information technology asset disposition) services have differing priorities, and many of them involve actions that must take place before a device is shredded to turn it into secondary commodities.
Data security is often the highest priority, and while this can be accomplished by shredding, SRS also performs software erasure and degaussing services for companies that wish to resell their unwanted computers, phones and other devices.
That is because selecting the highest value recovery method also is important to customers, said Phelan, and that often involves preparing a device for resale. Along with these two priorities, Phelan said customers are seeking compliance with pertinent regulations (involving data security and environmental laws) and often have corporate sustainability targets that focus on reuse and recycling.
Mohammed Sulaiman Al-Harty of Oman-based environmental services firm Be’ah said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region is beginning to move away from the traditional “make, take and dispose” mentality regarding the more than 700,000 tonnes of WEEE material it generates annually.
Be’ah has a 3,600-tonnes-per-year WEEE processing pilot facility coming online in 2017, said Al-Harthy, that will include dismantling and resale operations. He said Oman is considering an extended producer responsibility system for electronic devices.
Neil Reid of Saudi Arabia-based Holoul Electronic Recycling Treatment Company said that nation does not currently have legislation in place to provide support to WEEE processing, but in the kingdom “this material has to go somewhere [and] we have a duty to do this.”
He said the company is striving to handle up to 17 million tonnes of the 93 million tonnes of WEEE generated in Saudi Arabia each year. “Zero waste to landfill is what we’re looking for,” he said of Holoul’s philosophy.
Reid said the company has entered an alliance with Ireland-based Wisetek to help it navigate the reuse and resale markets and it will work with Wisetek on other “life cycle management services.”
Candice Taylor of Sweden-based telecom equipment provider Ericsson says the company is one where product designers “do talk to recyclers” in an effort to make its equipment more recyclable.
“We put the closed loop into our strategy,” said Taylor, adding that Ericsson’s corporate goals include reducing its carbon footprint by 42% and achieving a 98% recycling rate on the products it takes back at the end of their life cycles.
Joris Lauwers of Belgium-based Umicore Precious Metals Refining told attendees that its smelters are an important link in the WEEE recycling chain, as they allow precious and nonferrous metals to be recovered and turned into new products.
He said there are currently only 10 such smelters serving the “hundreds of thousands of collectors and recyclers” handling WEEE materials. “These [facilities] require sophisticated technology and large capital expenditures,” he remarked.
Lauwers said one trend supporting the potential for increased future smelting capacity is the proliferation of electric and hybrid vehicles with their considerable volumes of nickel-containing batteries.
The 2016 Recycling Confex Middle East was Dec. 5-6 at the Hyatt Regency Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
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Source: Recycling Today
2016 Recycling Confex Middle East: Think before you shred
<![CDATA[Companies involved in the shredding of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) around the world, even those who have invested heavily in WEEE shredding plants, are paying greater attention to repair, reuse and resale markets, according to presenters at the WEEE processing session at the 2016 Recycling Confex Middle East, which took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in early December. “Shredders are no longer the solution for every device,” declared Stephen Phelan, managing director in the Middle East for Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS), a company that operates shredding plants for WEEE materials in several nations. Phelan said customers for SRS’ ITAD (information technology asset disposition) services have differing priorities, and many of them involve actions that must take place before a device is shredded to turn it into secondary commodities. Data security is often the highest priority, and while this can be accomplished by shredding, SRS also performs software erasure and degaussing services for companies that wish to resell their unwanted computers, phones and other devices. That is because selecting the highest value recovery method also is important to customers, said Phelan, and that often involves preparing a device for resale. Along with these two…