Zapping the Toxic Out of Growing Electronic Waste [News]

For nearly a year, a disused 30-inch cathode-ray-tube (CRT) TV sat in the living room of Mrs Adeline Koh’s four-room flat. No karung guni or rag-and-bone man wanted the old set because it was too bulky and heavy to cart away.

Two weeks ago, the 38-year-old finally handed it over to local rag-and-bone company Recycling Point Dot Com, which will donate or scrap it.

As consumers like her switch more frequently to sleeker appliances and gadgets, lured by firms constantly upgrading their products, the problem of electronic waste, or e-waste, is mounting.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) does not keep a record of the amount of e-waste generated in Singapore, but figures showing the amount of electronic gadgets consumers here buy each year should prove cause for worry. Read more

How Nokia and TES-AMM Recycles Old Mobile Phones

Green Business Times went for a site visit recently to check out how Nokia and its e-waste vendor, TES-AMM (Singapore) Pte Ltd, collects and recycles old mobile phones.

Nokia has the largest voluntary mobile phone recycling scheme worldwide, with takeback and collection facilities in over 5,000 Nokia Care Centres across 85 countries.

In Singapore, Nokia currently has collection points in all Nokia Care Centres at Wheelock Place, Century Square, Parkway Parade, Causeway Point and Suntec City. Take back facilities are also available in NUS, NTU, SMU, Nanyang Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, St Margaret Secondary, St Hilda Primary and Secondary, and Saint Andrew JC.

In July 2008, Nokia launched the deployment of the Nokia Recycling Kiosks (NRK), which are automated recycling kiosks, in Malaysia and Singapore. Nokia is also running the ‘Recycle A Phone & Adopt A Tree’ program in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. With every phone sent for recycling, customers will receive a tree in their name planted under the NEWTrees initiative. This is a collaboration between Nokia, WWF Indonesia and Equinox Publishing, and Nokia has committed funds towards the planting of 100,000 trees in Indonesia.

In Singapore, Nokia is working with TES-AMM to recycle raw materials from the mobile phones collected. The raw materials recovery rate at TES-AMM is as high as 99%. Many different materials and precious metals can be recycled from mobile phones and made into new products, including:

• Plastic: Plastic is largely used on the covers and external parts of a mobile device. They are turned into plastic pallets to be used in warehousing.
• Stainless Steel: This is used on external detailing phone covers and some internal components. It can be recycled and used again in all sorts of products from mobile devices, to kitchen kettles, ovens and in bicycle frames.
• Copper: Copper is used in a mobile phone’s circuitry and printed wiring boards. It can be recycled into copper pipes or to make musical instruments.
• Gold: Small amounts of gold are used in a mobile phone to coat connectors and electrical surfaces. It can be recycled and used again in other mobile and electronic devices, dental fillings or to make jewellery.
• Platinum: This is used in the electrical components of a mobile phones. It can be reclaimed and used in catalytic convertors for passenger cars, for equipment, dental filling or in jewellery.
• Cobalt and lithium salt: These rare earth metals are recovered from recycled batteries and are re-made into lithium ion batteries.

Here are some photos taken during the site visit at TES-AMM’s recycling facility:

Mobile phone recycling

Manual dismantling of old mobile phones

Sorting of components

Crushing of circuit boards and sieving

Ferrous metal separation

Crushed circuit boards

Crushed circuit boards undergo hammer mill and electrostatic separation to get:

Fibrous powder (for making plastic pallets)

Metal powder (contains 60-70% copper)

Fibrous powder and other waste plastics used to make plastic pallets by heat extrusion

Chemical processes to extract gold from components

Gold melting

Li-ion battery recycling

Electrical and Electronic Waste Recycling

Electrical and electronic items such as televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, handphones, computers, printers, and batteries are increasingly being disposed as waste after use. These waste are also known as e-waste and they are posing an environmental problem as most of these waste products contain toxic chemicals and can affect the environment and our health if they are incinerated or landfilled.

In addition, there is also the problem of e-waste being dumped in developing countries and recycled in an unhealthy and pollutive manner. Watch this video on the problem of e-waste:

In Singapore, there are no official figures on the amount of e-waste generated and recycled. But Singaporeans are known to be big users of electrical and electronic products, thus we can imagine the substantial problem of e-waste here.

Let’s take a closer look at e-waste recycling:

E-Waste Recycling in Singapore

Used electrical and electronic items are sold to the karang guni men, secondhand traders and shops, or traded-in when buying the new items. The used items are refurbished and sold locally or exported overseas for reuse.

The used electrical and electronic items, and electronic scrap from industries are also sent to local e-waste recycling facilities where precious metals such as gold and platinum are extracted, and recovered materials such as plastics are sent to local recycling companies.

Watch this video to learn about extracting gold and other metals from e-waste:

Collectors, Traders and Recycling Companies for E-Waste

To find a recycling collector or someone who wants your e-waste, you can use our online business waste exchange, Waste is not Waste. We connect businesses and organisations that generate waste materials with those who want the materials, thus helping both parties save time and money while helping the environment.

Visit Waste is not Waste to learn more about us, the benefits and how it works. Remember that waste is not waste, but potential resources to be used again.

What Can I Do

First, reduce your e-waste by asking yourself whether you need to buy new stuff like IT equipment and handphones frequently. Remember to Buy and Use Only What You Need.

If you have some electrical and electronic items that you don’t want but are still in good condition, try to Give It Away or Sell for Cash before recycling them.

You can also use the following e-waste recycling collection services:

1. Nokia collects old Nokia handphones, handphone batteries and accessories at any Nokia Care Center, and sends them for recycling. Watch this video on the Nokia recycling programme:

2. Motorola has an ECOMOTO Takeback programme to collect back old Motorola handphones, batteries, chargers and accessories at selected collection points.

3. The Dell Recycling programme provides collection of unwanted Dell computer equipment (computers, printers, scanners, etc) from homes, and collection of any computer equipment (all brands) from business customers.

4. The HP Planet Partners programme provides recycling collection of computer equipment (computers, servers, printers, fax machines, digital cameras, etc) from commercial customers. The programme also provides a cartridge recycling service for everyone to return empty HP print cartridges to the HP office or to recycling bins at retail stores.

5. Toshiba offers collection of used notebooks from end users and also offers consumers a drop-off for their used Notebook Batteries at any Toshiba Notebook Service Centers.

6. The Canon Cartridge Recycling Programme provides collection of Canon toner and ink cartridges at four Canon locations.

7. Brother has a cartridge recycling programme to collect Brother ink cartridges by mail through a free postage-paid Brother recycling envelope. You can also recycle used Brother ink, toner and drum cartridges by walk-in at selected locations. Brother also collects back their cartridges directly from corporate customers.