
Early 2017 brought with it another indicator that collectors and recyclers of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) may need to continue focusing on local dismantling and recycling solutions.
Steve Wong of Hong Kong-based Fukutomi Co. Ltd., in a regulatory update prepared in mid-February for the global recycling community, indicates that “on 7 February, the General Administration of Customs of China (GAC), held a national anti-smuggling meeting in Beijing in preparation for a one-year action plan named ‘Border-gate Sword 2017.’ It is a cross-department joint action with a focus on the smuggling crackdown of foreign waste, agricultural products, resource products, tax related goods, drugs and guns, etc.”
While the crackdown goes well beyond unwanted, non-working WEEE items, Wong indicates the GAC and other agencies involved have declared the effort includes an “unrelenting crackdown on ‘foreign waste’ smuggling, [including a] focused crackdown for smuggling and illicit activities on solid waste including industrial waste, E-waste, household waste and plastic waste.”
Wong says the GAC has provided figures to indicate that its “anti-smuggling work scored increased numbers in 2016 vs. 2015,” with 2,633 cases investigated in 2016, a 17% increase from the year before.
Adds Wong, “As compared with ‘Operation Green Fence’ [which took place earlier this decade], the market is less panicked this time due to the fact that market players are more disciplined than years ago. Nevertheless, impacts are anticipated as more Customs checks could be exercised, which means time and cost.”
The initiative adds to years of efforts by government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) around the world to cause nonworking electronic scrap generated in the developed world to remain there at the end of its useful life.
Thus, if corporations and governments in other parts of the world insist upon the recycling of WEEE materials, the incentives are there to invest in automated systems to maximise the value and volume of materials recovered from this stream.
HEADACHES AND GOOD EXAMPLES
At the International Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC) 2017, held in Salzburg, Austria, in January, several changes to WEEE recycling procedures were discussed.
During presentations and press conferences at the IERC, which is organised by Switzerland-based ICM AG, manufacturers of electronic devices said they are trying to keep end-of-life recycling in mind when designing products, but companies who handle the obsolete items said challenges remain.
When designing its products, United States-based Dell takes into account reparability and recyclability, said Jonathan Perry, a producer responsibility compliance consultant with the company. “The batteries of our laptops are easily removable and we use recycled plastics from recycled electronics in our housing parts, effectively closing the materials loop,” he remarked. “Our experts are looking at future design as well as recycling technologies to ensure that our products remain highly recyclable.”
But other materials are causing headaches for recyclers, said Mike Biddle, managing director of U.S.-based cleantech fund Evok Innovations and founder and director of MBA Polymers. “Apart from the increasingly complex materials, composites of mixed materials, the known legacy heavy metals and halogenated flame retardants, new additives are also beginning to emerge, such as nanoparticles, presenting recycling enterprises with new challenges,” he stated.
Little research has been done into some of these newest materials with respect to how they behave in traditional recycling processes, said Biddle. It is possible some of these new materials and additives may also present new dangers with respect to environmental protection and industrial health and safety if not handled with care, particularly during shredding or other size reduction processing. Furthermore, it’s often not easy or even possible for the recycler to know which products have additives that might need special handling, as these additives are sometimes considered proprietary, he added.
From a commercial standpoint, too, the years to come are likely to remain challenging. Biddle pointed to three trends that are actually “good for the planet” but may be tough for recyclers. These include: downsizing, i.e. making electronic devices smaller and smaller; life extension, which means the turnover cycles of many devices are beginning to lengthen; and a potential trend toward a sharing economy.
“Particularly in major cities, the idea of sharing is becoming more and more popular,” said Biddle. Not every home needs all of the power tools and appliances they have that they perhaps use only a few times a year. Although the sharing economy is a good idea, it presents a downside for e-scrap recyclers, as it reduces the number of new devices that need to be produced and therefore also the volume of end-of-life devices to be recycled.
Christian Müller-Guttenbrunn, an Austrian who is managing partner and CEO of Müller-Guttenbrunn GmbH, was presented with the 2017 event’s IERC Honorary Award. The award is given at the IERC each year to “especially deserving figures from the recycling sector.”
“Christian has won this award for his life’s work, for the development of new recycling processes and the founding of new cleantech companies in Austria and Eastern Europe in various fields, such as plastics recycling and metal sorting,” wrote the Steering Committee of the IERC 2017 in presenting Müller-Guttenbrunn with the award. The Steering Committee says the award also honours the innovative team at the Müller-Guttenbrunn Group, which was largely responsible for introducing new technologies for extracting pollutants from electronic scrap and upgrading plastic scrap for industrial use.
PRACTICAL PROCESSING
In the United Kingdom, national recycling statistics for 2015 compiled by DEFRA (the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) indicate that household programmes in that nation collected more WEEE materials than the year before.
While the amount of metal and paper collected through such progammes actually declined in 2015, WEEE materials proved more abundant. According to a summary of the DEFRA figures prepared by Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd., 547,000 tonnes of WEEE material made their way to government-affiliated household programmes in 2015, up by 12.3% compared with the 487,000 tonnes collected in 2014.
The 547,000 tonnes collected through these programs represents 5.3% of the 10.3 million tonnes of WEEE materials collected in the European Union, according to Altech Trading Co. Ltd., a WEEE recycler based in Essex, England, in the U.K.
Altech says it has demonstrated its commitment to the local processing of WEEE materials with a recent investment in a shredder and downstream sorting system.
“WEEE is one of the world’s fastest growing waste streams, largely because of continued technological innovation in an era of ‘must have’ gadgets and appliances,” says WEEE Managing Director Colin Warren. “Also, as disappointing as this sounds, we live in a somewhat ‘throwaway’ society. Yes, there are many people who will invest in the repair of electrical equipment when things go wrong, but there are also plenty others who will simply dispose of the device in favour of a new replacement.”
Warren says part of Altech’s focus is to ensure legislative and environmental compliance for clients. As well, when processing 2,500 tonnes of WEEE per year, Warren says Altech also works hard to maximise recycling rates for optimum sustainability and revenue yield.
On the processing side, Altech’s first asset investment was a second-hand hammer mill-style shredder. The company says the machine couldn’t achieve the particle refinement necessary to support an efficient recyclate recovery process.
The Altech team therefore went back to the drawing board, and further marketplace research brought them to the high-torque, slow-speed shredder design. (For more on Altech’s equipment choices, see this news item from Recycling Today Global Edition.)
Processing WEEE materials through a shredder ultimately spurs the need for automated, accurate and high-throughput sorting and separating equipment.
Several vendors compete vigorously in this market, with new magnetic, optical and multiple-technology devices introduced seemingly monthly.
One of the most recent automated sorting devices, announced in January 2017, is the ColorPlus-R sorter offered by National Recovery Technologies (NRT), a member of the United States-based Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) family of companies.
Similar to its predecessor the ColorPlus, the ColorPlus-R uses an image processing system to detect materials based on color analysis and object recognition. Unique to the ColorPlus-R is the ability to color analyze opaque objects, such as black plastics, the company says.
All ColorPlus models employ transmissive detection, placing the material between the light source and the detection camera. NRT says its In-Flight Sorting technology, processing up to 50 million pixels per second, is able to detect and target objects in flight. In addition to transmissive detection, the ColorPlus-R has added a second LED light source above the material to facilitate reflective detection.
“The real advantage to the ColorPlus-R is the ability now to recognize the color of an opaque object with extreme confidence and in a fraction of a second,” says NRT President Matthias Erdmannsdoerfer. “For example, black plastics pose a problem to our customers, particularly in plastic recycling facilities where accuracy is ultimately defined by the parts per million. Black plastics absorb too much light for near infrared detection by polymer type, so, with this new equipment, we can effectively remove this type of contamination.”
The composition of black plastics can be unknown and the material is problematic in waste-to-fuel operations, where end product specifications require a particular material recipe.
For WEEE recyclers who encounter plastics in a wide variety of resin types, shapes, sizes and colours, advances in both shredding and sorting can only help to optimise their systems.
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