A quick check of our website stats brings up a strange, yet understandable phenomenon. People are searching the web with the keywords: “Why recycle computers?”. To us, this seems a little strange. It’s obvious, if not a given fact that you must recycle such equipment, rather than just throw it away, yet reading recent articles in the mainstream and specialist press highlights the fact that the message necessarily isn’t getting through.

Computers and their associated equipment should be seen to be akin to a car. Developed countries have implemented stringent controls for Vehicles and the Automotive industry adheres to strict guidelines in their manufacture, maintenance and decommissioning. Similar controls exist in Europe and many other countries for the repair and decommissioning of Computers. The reasoning behind such controls are twofold:

1) Computer equipment, like cars, contains materials that are inherently damaging to the environment if not treated properly during the decommissioning process.
2) Resources are scarce and require significant energy to extract them from natural deposits.

The general public as a whole has developed a throw away society as a direct consequence of industrialisation. Cheap electronic goods, built in obsolescence and a mentality grown out of a need to compete, means that consumers are constantly striving to achieve and thus own the latest goods, rather than make do with what they have.

Businesses compete out of a need to survive. Since it’s inception, development strategies for the computer equipment industry have encompassed a need to provide faster equipment. The result is a highly competitive market, which like the automobile industry, is attempting to tap into every market on the planet in order to improve sales. China, with it’s unprecedented human resources has joined the global stage and is now competing head to head with the west in an industry that was once perceived as the preserve of Europe and America. The ability to duplicate products developed in the West is uncanny and, without the requirements for development, Chinese companies can position themselves in a lucrative position on developed consumer markets by undercutting the competition. The downside to this is of course the lack of stringent quality and health and safety control measures that we see in the West and these affect all levels from the worker manufacturing the equipment, through to the consumer in the West.

Such highly competitive, low cost markets have driven up volume sales and provided a glut of electronic equipment, much of which is obsolete within 3 years of it’s sale. The resultant waste, whilst bearing no monetary value and, like the car market, signifying a loss for the consumer, contains numerous resources, which in conjunction with being scarce, are locked into the waste. Such waste goods, when finally perceived by the consumer as having no personal value are discarded. Consumers fail to realise other values associated with such goods, simply because of a lack of awareness.

On the basis that each computer was manufactured from plastic and steel and contains quantities of Lead, Gold and Copper, each obsolete piece of hardware could potentially yield resources far easier than mining for them.

The issue is one of perception on the part of individual consumers. A belief that recycling one individual item, whether it be a Computer, Telephone or laptop, will not make a difference. This coupled with a lack of support from Local Governments, businesses or the general community for a system of recycling means that volumes of recyclate do not reflect the true quantities being discarded each year.

Whilst strict guidelines do exist in Europe, the legislation is still being circumvented by many “recycling companies” and the use of trade routes for supposedly “working” equipment being used to dispose of potentially harmful contaminants in Countries less fortunate than ours. Tight legislative guidelines, whilst heightening awareness of new laws are not being enforced correctly and as a consequence have resulted in new unregulated trades targeting business waste.

A lack of security by Authorised treatment facilities, acting on the part of local government has allowed a trade in waste consumer computers to develop, leading to the sale of obsolete equipment in developing countries, where personal information, bank details, names and addresses can be harvested from untreated redundant hard drives and sold on the black market for use in everything from Bank fraud to email scams. Media exposure to this has resulted in many questioning the viability of recycling obsolete computers.

However, the key issue still remains. That of resource extraction and what difference such schemes can make. Given the correct environment, one of up front manual processing and segregation, a high degree of resource extraction can be achieved. Further segregation and materials recovery by relevant materials specialists can then be employed on the resultant materials, with little waste by-products being produced.

Waste volumes associated with an efficient electronics recycling system in the west could generate a high percentage of raw materials used in the manufacturing industry. The result would be a reduced manufacturing cost, borne out by the lowered costs for raw materials. Market buoyancy, associated with higher profitability would underpin such an industry, resulting in less fluctuation within the resource markets throughout the world.

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