We're all aware of the impact our use of scarce resources is having on the enviroment. The excessive use of hydrocarbons in the petroleum industry is sending the price of crude, both light and heavy on an ever increasing upward spiral, the result of which is a hike in petrol and Diesel prices at the pumps. What of other resources and the resultant impact prices from these are having on day-to-day living? Two years ago saw a sudden and prolonged increase in the price of Steel, copper and Gold. These were brought about mainly by the rapid and somewhat unexpected growth in the Chinese economy. Why should this have any effect upon the recycling of computers you might ask? Well, the impact is pretty staggering actually. With the Price of gold hitting $400 per troy ounce, it suddenly became extremely viable for recyclers, such as ourselves to market our services. There's been a very big boom in computer recycling over the past year, brought about in part as a direct result of Sir Alan Sugar's decission to charge his latest Apprentice with the task of investigating the viability of the industry, but more as a result of increased prices for raw materials.
We rely upon the resale of scrap materials to ensure sufficinet profit, which are obtained through the breaking down of computers into component form. Of course, for collections from cities, it's necessary to charge a fee. We advocate this practice throughout our website, but to be perfectly honest, it's the only way to seperate the various parts that go into manufacturing a computer. The result is tonnes of circuit boards being recycled by each recycling company per year. The ammount of precious metals per circuit board/ motherboard may be small, but when equated per tonne, equates to a very viable operation, particularly at today's metals prices. It has to be a viable operation as recycling computers is a labourious job, with 30 computers being broken down per person, per working day. Each kilogramme of circuit board can be sold on for about £1.70 and it takes up to 3 computers to generate this amount of recyclable materials.
Of course, it's not just the circuit boards that can be recycled. The steel cases can be sold on for scrap metals, as can the chassis of the computer, floppy drive chassis, hard drive cases (although usually alloy) and drive platters. Heat sinks have to be seperated out during the recycling process due to their high aluminium alloy content and these are recycled seperately- for less money per kilo, but still with a cash value.
The cost for carrying out an operation like this isn't cheap. Not only are there the man hours involved in breaking down the used computers into component form, but there's also the cost of running vehilces, used in their collection, the man hours associated with that and then the overheads associated with providing a property to run the operation from. In effect, although a profitable venture, computer recycling isn't a sucessful business to run, when looking at it from the point of breaking down old machines into component metal form.
That's probably one of the main reasons why most recyclers opt for 'quick turnaround' through a process of collection, evaluation and resale of the used equipment within Britain and to developing Countries. The result is a viable solution to potential cash flow problems. Acquisition of equipment can incur a fee to potential clientelle, which off-sets any overheads associated with collection of the computer waste. Assesment and re-distribution, including any advertising associated with such equipment can again be offset via resale of useable equipment. Unfortunately, if managed incorrectly or with a Business orientated ethos, such a practice can have a significant environmental and health impact.
Next: Ethical Computer disposal
