CyclePoint from SourceAmerica opens Minnesota facility

ProAct eRecycling Services in Red Wing, Minnesota, is a new service unit of ProAct Inc. that has started receiving obsolete electronics for disassembly, recycling and eventual use in new products.

“We will take almost anything with a cord,” says project leader Tim Hovey. Computers, televisions, CRT monitors, even toasters are collected at ProAct’s Red Wing facility, according to a ProAct news release. The facility charges a fee to accept some items.

Much of the work at the Red Wing plant is performed by people with disabilities in what ProAct says is an environmentally responsible manner verified by third parties.

ProAct eRecycling Services is part of the CyclePoint from SourceAmerica national network of electronics recycling providers created in part to employ people with disabilities. (SourceAmerica was profiled in the September/October 2014 issue of Storage & Destruction Business magazine, a Recycling Today Media Group publication.) The overall focus is on green jobs for people with and without disabilities and environmental responsibility, says Jim Bohmbach, manager of production at ProAct eRecycling Services in Red Wing.

The nonprofit receives obsolete items from the city’s Solid Waste Campus and helps consumers at its Red Wing facility during limited hours on weekdays.

ProAct eRecycling says it is a registered recycler with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and working toward achieving R2/RIOS (Responsible Recycling Practices/Recycling Industry Operating Standard) certification by early 2016.

ProAct bills itself as a “tier 2” service provider, which means it collects and disassembles electronics. Some materials are then shipped to “tier 3” companies, which do the final prep before recovered materials are sold on commodity markets.