Sponsors of a used electronics collection program held in April have released findings about the materials collected at a series of 12 events in the St. Paul, Minn., area. The collection events yielded about 81,000 pounds of materials in a program headed by Asset Recover Corp., St. Paul, and sponsored by Matsushita Electric Corp. of America (Panasonic), Sharp Electronics and Sony Electronics.
The manufacturers funded the cost of recycling their own brand name equipment, and fees were charged for other brands of equipment collected. The event was focused on not only collecting used electronic, but also to gather data on the materials residents were bringing to be recycled.
The project was in conjunction with 12 annual community clean-up events Asset Recovery Corp., serves and was held in two phases. The first phase included a kick-off event at the ARC facility and the city of Shakopee collection. About 12,000 pounds of electronic material was collected, with about half of the equipment generated on the first Friday/Saturday of the event.
Products were reviewed in detail to gather information on manufacturer name, type of items, age of items and total weight. The second phase included the remaining collection events where data on total weight of sponsored equipment was collected.
The kick-off event was advertised in local newspapers and the local media. Each sponsor donated about $500 worth of new equipment for a raffle to attract additional residents. For equipment not manufactured by one of the sponsors, the following fees were charged:
Console televisions, console stereos and copiers: $25; Non-console TVs: $15; Monitors: $10; and phones, peripherals, stereos and printers: $5
The remainder of the collection events was not tied as closely to the manufacturer sponsors and collected less materials manufactured by the sponsors. This is attributed to the fact that those sponsor names were not publicized as much for the remainder of the events as they were for the kick-off event.
ARC identified 15 major brands of materials, with about 30 to 40 other brand names of different units also present. A sample of products was taken and tracked through the demanufacturing process to identify particular volumes of materials generated on a percentage basis. The sample was based on a cross-section of televisions, monitors and other electronic scrap.
Findings included:
Scrap generated by weight: Garbage, 8%; Usable, 8%; Scrap Metal, 43%; Glass, 32%; and Plastic, 9%