PCs Don't Die--They Become Road Fill

Ever wonder how PCs get recycled?

Tom Spring, PC World

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Four workers huddle around a plywood table, each smashing computer monitors with hammers as bits of plastic shoot across a warehouse. The constant pounding punctuates the hum of a barely audible radio. Heaps of gutted PCs are everywhere. Cracked plastic casing spills out of metal drums, and disembodied cathode ray tubes lie naked and carefully piled in a corner.

Stephen Pozner, wearing protective eyewear and standing beside a 20-foot stack of cow-spotted Gateway boxes, reaches down to pick up an old PC circuit board from a gigantic cardboard container. "Gold," Pozner says, describing the material from which the bulky circuit board was made. "Older computers used more precious metals than ones today."

Bytes to Bits

Old computers seldom have to die; they can be recycled at places like Global Recycling Technologies. Such firms can reuse, resell, and recycle between 93 and 97 percent of the silicon bones of spent computers. These firms are the high-tech equivalent of the auto industry's chop shops, salvage yards, and scrap metal suppliers.

Global and its competitors are flourishing as new PCs flood the market at a dizzying pace, pushing older PCs into early retirement. That, along with growing environmental concerns that PCs will soon overrun and pollute landfills, has created a healthy trade in scrap computer parts and recycling.

PC plastic is now used to fill potholes on city streets and to make industrial-grade flooring. Old computer chips are salvaged and resold for use inside handheld games and electronic plush dolls. And metal shavings are often spread on top of solid waste in landfills.

"Business is booming," says Pozner, Global's senior vice president. He says Global enjoys annual revenue growth of 20 to 30 percent, since it started demanufacturing PCs three years ago.

PC Mortality Rate

Researchers estimate 16 million PCs were put out to pasture last year, according to Carnegie Mellon University. Of those, 10 percent are clogging landfills. Another 10 percent had second lives in schools or senior centers, and companies like Global recycled another 10 percent.

But a whopping 70 percent of kaput computers ended up in attics or basements, or as overpriced doorstops, says Chris Hendrickson, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

Some 150 million computers will be recycled in 2005, and another 55 million will end up in landfills, according to Carnegie Mellon's research. "People are really struggling to find innovative ways to reuse old computers," Hendrickson says.

What's It Worth?

At best, a dead 486-class computer is worth about $30 in spare parts and scrap metal, says Robert Fox, president of Fox Electronics, one of the country's largest computer recyclers. Fox recycles 900 tons of computers monthly, extracting everything from hard drives to memory and CPUs and reselling them. What can't be sold as computer parts is sold off as scrap for about $20 a ton.

In general, a ton of circuit boards yields approximately 10 ounces of gold. The average PC contains about 1 gram of gold. Other metals recovered from computers are platinum, silver, copper, steel, and aluminum.

But a PC's amount of ferrous metal is declining, as computer makers build more efficiently. That, along with a torrent of old PCs flooding the market, has driven down the cost of scrap PCs.

"The market is going up, but prices are going down," Hendrickson says. The price of RAM in the global marketplace, for example, has dropped from $8 per 4MB to $1.

"It's all about supply and demand," Fox says. Now, a glut of old PCs drives prices down. "But lucky for us, there is still a high demand," he adds.

Toxic Computers

Beyond the environmental value of reducing waste through the reuse of materials, PC recyclers tackle more pressing environmental concerns. Primarily, they reduce emissions of hazardous materials into the environment.

In 1992, the Environmental Protection Agency banned cathode ray tubes from landfills because of their high amounts of lead. According to Pozner, an average computer monitor contains about 8 pounds of lead.

Lead can also be found on computer circuit boards. The mercury, lithium, and cadmium found in many PC batteries are toxic at high levels. Other toxins, such as PCBs, are used in computer capacitors and are also hazardous, Pozner says.

Global and Fox work with companies that separate lead from glass in a smelting process. Both lead and glass can have a second life. Recyclers can extract other toxins for reuse or safe disposal.

More on the Way

We may be in for an onslaught of obsolete PCs, according to market researchers. The sub-$700 PCs flooding the market today will create new challenges for the waste industry. These ultracheap PCs will have ultrashort life cycles, Hendrickson says, and they'll pump more waste into the PC disposal chain.

Even though a clear number of computer reuse and recycling options exist, waste companies and municipal governments will continue to haul computer scrap to landfills and incinerators, Hendrickson says.

"Much progress still needs to be made on making computers go away faster," he says. He believes we haven't seen the worst of it yet.

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