Above board down under

Corporations, environmental advocates and elected officials in Australia all say they have sound ideas and contributions to make toward the proper handling of end-of-life electronics.

The owners and managers of PGM Refiners (www.pgmrefiners.com), based in Dandenong in the state of Victoria, have established a business model they say can accomplish the goals of each of these constituencies to help ensure that electronic scrap is recycled properly.

PGM CEO David Joyce and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Karvan Jayaweera say PGM’s model can work within the confines of Australia’s and Victoria’s regulatory climate and fulfill a social mission in terms of employment all while still being a viable business model. In 2015, PGM will make considerable investments to help underpin its business model and allow the company to handle a wider array of end-of-life items.
 

Change in plans

Despite the presence of the word “refiners” in its name, PGM Refiners does not own any refining, smelting or other hot metal production systems. The name does, however, reflect the original intentions of PGM when it was a start-up company.

Says Jayaweera, “PGM Refiners was established during my second year of university, when I was initially interested in developing a refining process for extracting precious metals from the printed circuit boards (PCBs), hence the company name,” says Jayaweera, who has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

He continues, “It soon became apparent there wasn’t enough PCB volumes within Australia to justify a process. Hence, the small team at PGM Refiners focused our attention on a larger customer segment—CRT TV and monitor recycling.”

As do nations throughout the world, Australia has a considerable number of end-of-life TVs and monitors in the hands of owners who are not always aware of how to best dispose of them.

“What followed was the development of a pilot mechanical process as an innovative value proposition for the e-waste recycling segment,” says Jayaweera. “Starting from this concept, PGM grew to the company it is today, thanks to the people at PGM and the mentors who helped build the company.”

On the operations side, Joyce has been a key person in the development of PGM’s mechanical system designed to safely recycle end-of-life TVs and monitors into secondary glass, metal and plastic commodities.

“We developed the gear ourselves—it wasn’t commercial off-the-shelf equipment,” says Joyce, who after spending years on the operations and plant management side was promoted to president and CEO in the second half of 2014.

PGM Refiners has carved out a niche in Victoria State as a recycler of CRT monitors, TVs and the other items covered under Australia’s National Recycling Scheme, which in addition to TVs and monitors includes computers and computer peripherals.

Jayaweera and Joyce say the company has concentrated on mechanical and technical excellence (including in the realms of safety and environmental compliance) while producing high-grade secondary commodities.

“PGM’s biggest innovative accomplishment is the development of an end-to-end mechanical e-waste recycling system,” says Jayaweera. “The mechanical system is now in its third iteration and was developed and refined over eight years through persistence and experience,” he continues. He also credits Joyce, saying, “David was building all the equipment for us” during those eight years.

Jayaweera continues, “What sets our process apart is the ability to mechanically process CRT TVs and monitors, including the separation of CRTs into their panel and funnel fractions. The system gives PGM the advantage of high throughput, high-quality glass outputs, which is particularly important for the panel glass and the ability to accept and recycle damaged CRT TVs and monitors. It improves bulk handling efficiencies at our operations and for the customer.”

The company also has created a social mission aspect to its operations in the development of its workforce and is laying plans to keep the jobs of those workers secure in an environment where the electronic scrap stream is changing rapidly.
 

Issues and answers

In the handling of Australia’s end-of-life CRT monitors and televisions, PGM Refiners works within the confines of that nation’s National Recycling Scheme, which includes a number of product stewardship and reporting aspects to it.

The goal set by Australia’s government is aggressive, notes Jayaweera.

“Recently, the Australian Government mandated a minimum 90% recycling target for electronic scrap,” he comments.

Both Jayaweera and Joyce credit the government system for helping provide the material that keeps PGM Refiners busy, but they also say there is room for considerable improvement in how recyclers, OEMs, retailers and end-of-life product owners are incentivised.

“There is a disparity standard of recycling and auditing between the five co-regulators who manage the National Recycling Scheme,” says Jayaweera, referring to five recycling and logistics companies approved by the government to coordinate activities and report statistics on behalf of OEMs and retailers.

This disparity, says Jayaweera, “places immense pressures on companies such as PGM Refiners, who have made major investments in recycling technologies and infrastructure to process e-scrap to a high-level environmental standard. It creates an environment where specific co-regulators are placing enormous pricing pressures on recyclers within a competitive environment; the end results can be recyclers cutting corners.”

As has occurred in other parts of the world, states within Australia have experienced CRT stockpiles when there is a disconnect between an incentive to collect versus an incentive to process properly, says Jayaweera.

“An example of this situation is that the Environment Protection Authority of New South Wales was left with a minimum 6,000-tonne stockpile of CRT glass throughout the state,” says Jayaweera. “This was a result of New South Wales recyclers accepting electronic scrap without having appropriate CRT glass recycling solutions in place, nor the funding to recycle the material in accordance to accepted downstream recycling processes.”

Jayaweera and Joyce are not fatalistic about the situation and are in dialog with the government to seek improvements. “PGM Refiners is actively working with government and industry players to resolve several key issues and unlock significantly more potential for the industry,” says Jayaweera.

“First, e-scrap recycling standards vary significantly amongst recyclers and co-regulators, encouraging co-regulators and recyclers to take shortcuts that result in poor WHS (work, health and safety) and environmental outcomes,” says Jayaweera. “PGM sets high standards and is regularly audited externally—we’d encourage external auditing throughout the industry.”

He continues, “Second, scheme targets are relatively low by international standards and the funding base is relatively narrow, resulting in large amounts of electronic scrap being stockpiled or sent to landfill by [government] councils. There is a huge amount of e-scrap potential out there in Australia and we’d encourage government and the industry to work together to ensure more of it is properly recycled.”

The way the scheme as managed also introduces unwelcome volatility in volumes, according to PGM. “Recycling volumes are still volatile, meaning that it’s difficult for leading e-scrap recyclers such as PGM to make necessary investments in state-of-the-art recycling technology,” says Jayaweera.

The seasonality aspect also affects hiring decisions, notes Jayaweera. “It’s tough on our work force: seasonality means recyclers have to expand and contract their work forces.”

PGM is protective of its work force in part because of pride in the social mission the company has created in putting together its staff.

“PGM employs a minimum of 70% of its front-line employees from long-term unemployed backgrounds,” says Jayaweera. The policy, he says is “making a major difference in an area with an unemployment rate of over 20%.”

Tapping into that workforce was the answer to an early problem faced by the company. “When we started PGM we had a big problem finding the right personnel,” recalls Jayaweera. “We’d put ads out and get 100 applicants, but only a couple that were worthwhile. We found an employment agency that focuses on long-term unemployed—people who really wanted a steady, long-term job. We put a policy together about what type of employees we want, which can include single parents or people from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Pride in what PGM Refiners has accomplished is coupled with an urgency by Jayaweera and Joyce to ensure that the company’s future is protected in an industry sector that is changing rapidly.
 

More changes ahead

The proper handling and recycling of computer monitors and TVs with CRTs will remain a challenge for several years, but PGM Refiners is aware that CRT technology is fading within the consumer and workplace electronics sectors.

“Cathode ray TVs haven’t been sold in Australia for several years now,” notes Jayaweera, providing one of the reasons why PGM Refiners made a strategic decision in late 2014 to purchase a Blubox recycling unit for its Dandenong facility and to become Blubox’s exclusive distributor in Australia.

Blubox Trading AG is a Switzerland-based maker of electronic scrap recycling systems designed to handle end-of-life items such as LCD (liquid crystal display)-screen laptop computers and TVs, fluorescent lights and other devices containing mercury and heavy metals.

The Blubox units are designed to be fully enclosed to allow for emissions-free handling of these materials, creating marketable streams of plastic, metal and even mercury.

“We’re still seeing strong volumes of CRTs, but eventually this mix will change over the next five to 10 years, so PGM is making the appropriate investments in cutting-edge technology that will see us remain at the forefront of the industry in Australia over the long run,” says Jayaweera.

“It is certainly why we purchased the Blubox,” says Joyce. “Last year, LCDs represented just 2% of our mix. This financial year [which started in July 2014], it has already exceeded 5%.”

Geographic expansion is not necessarily foremost on the minds of Joyce and Jayaweera, but the duo admit it is one of the ways PGM Refiners can grow in the future, and the Blubox technology may tie into that.

“Our business model is transferrable and we do have aspirations of moving to other sites in the future,” says Joyce.

In the meantime, the duo say they will continue to focus on quality and safety standards to meet the electronic scrap recycling needs of OEMs, retailers and individuals in Australia. “Longer term, we see an increased focus on environmental outcomes favoring full-service providers like PGM, and making life difficult for any co-regulators and recyclers who are taking shortcuts,” states Jayaweera.

The author is editor of Recycling Today Global Edition and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.

Photos by Chris Clinnick Photography