Electronics

It is important to recycle electronics because they can contain hazardous materials and recoverable raw materials.  The recycling center accepts electronics year-round.  This includes computer, audio/video equipment, microwaves, batteries, ballasts and light bulbs.  In 2009 residents brought in 110,580 pounds of electronics and 10,778 light bulbs.  Bring electronics to the recycling center main desk.  There is a fee most items.  Be sure to call if you have questions.  There is typically help available to unload larger items, though it is wise to call ahead for large loads or especially heavy items like photocopiers and large screen TVs.

Guidelines and Fees

Why Recycle Electronics?

It is important to recycle electronics for a number of reasons.  They can contain hazardous materials that can enter the environment if disposed of improperly.  Roadside dumping and burning can allow heavy metals and toxic compounds to infiltrate into the soil, air, and water.  Heavy metals such as lead and mercury have the ability to leach out of electronic devices under certain environmental conditions.  These materials can cause a number of health problems in humans and wildlife.  Electronics recycling also helps recover reusable raw materials, conserves limited landfill space, and creates jobs.

Materials commonly found in computer equipment:Silica, Plastics, Iron, Aluminum, Copper, Lead, Zinc, Tin, Nickel, Barium, Manganese, Silver, Tantalum, Beryllium, Titanium, Cobalt, Antinomy, Cadmium, Bismuth, Chromium, Mercury, Germanium, Indium, Gold

What happens to recycle electronics?
Once electronics are dropped off at the Manitowoc County Recycling Center, they are stored in gaylords until they are shipped to an Electronics Scrap Recycler.  From there they process the electronics to recover raw materials and/or refurbish electronic components.  Materials recovered include: plastic, glass, lead, mercury, steel, copper, aluminum, brass, gold, silver, platinum, and nickel. Below are some examples of the raw material recovery process: 

Plastic Flotation Separation - Shredded and co-mingled plastics from electronic hardware are segregated by type, i.e., ABS, PSP, PVC, etc. utilizing a flotation process.  The segregated plastics are sold to manufactures as production feed stock and/or blend.

Melt/Smelting – Aluminum breakage (material that has aluminum content) is melted in a furnace and poured into a “sow” form.  These “sows” are mill ready grade and are sold to secondary processors who alloy it for a specific use, or sold directly to manufactures as feed stock.  The steel and other metal alloys that are not melted are sold to steel mills and foundries as production feed stock.

Shredding – Low-grade material, such as printed circuit boards are shredded and reduced to metal via an initial bake and then fusion via a pyro-metallurgical process.

Precious Metal Recovery - High-grade component material is processed utilizing a hydro-metallurgical process.  This chemical process produces zero waste as chemicals and waste waters are recovered and reused. 

Wire Chopping – Copper and/or aluminum core insulated wire is processed through a machine that chops the wire into small pieces.  These pieces are fed into a de-stoning separator that uses mechanical and pneumatic forces to separate the metal from the insulation.  Both metal and insulation are then segregated and sold.

Electrowinning – is a unique reverse plating process that allows a high recovery percentage of precious metals, as opposed to various other methodologies.

Grinding/Deburring of Glass – Lead glass from cathode ray tubes are initially size reduced.  The leaded glass is then sold to cathode ray tube manufactures.  The non-leaded glass is size reduced, deburred of sharp edges and used as granular material substitute in production processes, i.e. retaining wall brick.  

Source: Handy and Harman Electronic Materials Corp.
Available at:  http://www.svtc.org/hightech_prod/desktop.htm

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