Electronics Recycling Summit: Getting Perspective

Peter Muscanelli, president of the International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER), addressed attendees of a session titled “Industry Perspective” at the Electronics Recycling Summit. The event is sponsored by the IAER and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on

Muscanelli said his reason for forming the IAER was to “level the playing field” for electronics recyclers, though added the association has not yet been able to do so, despite developing a third-party certification process and guidelines on best management practices.

“We are facing a changing market,” Muscanelli said, citing state legislation, increased logistics costs, the lack of industry-wide best management practices and increased competition and the changing material composition of electronics.

Muscanelli said he believes the successful electronics recyclers will be certified and work to build alliances with other companies in the field. He also said that successful recyclers will have a national or international presence, take a fully integrated approach to asset management and continually improve their efficiencies while reducing their costs.

He added that the industry continues to be plagued by unfavorable perceptions. “We are not looked at as being credible. We are looked at as the bottom of the food chain,” he said.

Muscanelli’s speech was followed by a panel discussion that picked up on the issue of certification and whether the electronics recycling is becoming a two-tiered industry. Participants included Stephen Marshall of Chasm Industries, Northbrook, Ill.; Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, San Jose, Calif.; Jim Lynch of Compumentor/Tech Soup, San Francisco; and Todd Hill, TrueCycle, Pasadena, Calif.

Smith said he feels like the industry is already a two-tiered system. “No one outside of the insiders knows the difference,” he said. “There needs to be high-end certification.” Smith said that he’d prefer to have a single standard that would call for the use of the best available technology and preclude prison labor and the export of waste.  

Marshall said that the industry could be headed toward a tiered approach that is based on different levels of service that correspond to client requirements. He said economics would be the driver behind such a system.

According to Hill, though TrueCycle is IAER and ISO certified, most customers don’t understand the need for certification. He also noted that certification increases an electronics recycler’s operational costs.

“I fear that we will spend a lot of time trying to figure out what certification is rather than best management practices,” Muscanelli said. He added that after six years, the IAER’s certification program sill does not have stakeholder buy-in.

The Electronics Recycling Summit was May 8-11 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, Calif.