Manufacturers must take back the junked gear for free, creating opportunities for recyclers.
Jon Nappa of Liverpool, owner of Bruin Computer Trading & Recycling, is surrounded by old computers. The business does not charge a fee to take most electronic waste.
Syracuse, NY - If all the people in Onondaga County threw their junked computers, television sets, VCRs and printers into a pile, it would weigh almost 7 million pounds.
Until last month, it was 7 million pounds of trash. But when the state Legislature passed an e-waste recycling law recently, the heap was transformed into 7 million pounds of opportunity.
The law, which requires electronics manufacturers to take back e-waste for free, is expected to throw wide open the doors in a business that has already been on roller coaster ride locally this year.
Where to take your electronics
Best Buy: (All local stores), Accepts electronics including TVs; some size restrictions apply. There is a $10 fee, but you receive a $10 Best Buy Gift Card for recycling.
Bruin Computer Trading: (Liverpool), 410-0050. Free, no TVs.
Computer Gallery: (East Syracuse), 459-6102. Accepts all electronics. $10 fee for TVs and monitors.
Newtech Recycling: (Syracuse), 463-1112. Accepts electronics including TVs; some fees apply, except on Sony, Zenith, LG and GoldStar electronics, which are accepted for free.
Northeast Surplus & Materials: (Syracuse), 476-4025. No TVs, $10 per monitor
OC Management: (Liverpool), 458-3242
Salvation Army: (Syracuse), 445-0520, ext. 320. Only accepts items in working conditionIn January, the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency decided to shut down its electronics recycling center because it was losing $140,000 a year.
The new law could reopen that recycling program — only this time on the electronics industry’s dime.
And existing recyclers will probably be paid to handle junk for the manufacturers, too.
That’s because under the new law, electronics makers selling in New York must take in 43 million pounds of tech junk for recycling next year. The quotas go up after that. If the goal isn’t met, companies face fines.
In most of the 22 other states that have passed similar laws, the electronics companies pay local recyclers and municipal governments to handle the recycling, said Resa Dimino, who works in the commissioner’s policy office at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Under the new law, which starts April 1, people will be able to drop off their stuff for free.
Jon Nappa, owner of Bruin Computer Trading LLC, thinks there will be no shortage of businesses looking for a piece of the pile created by the new law. He’s been making money off e-junk for 14 years.
His nondescript building in Liverpool is stuffed with computers, printers and monitors. On Friday, workers unwrapped 24 pallets of the gear, each heaped 10 feet high. The morning’s soundtrack was the constant squeak of plastic wrap being peeled off one pile, then re-wrapped around a new one.
Nappa buys tractor-trailer loads full of computers and other office equipment dumped by government agencies and large companies.
He also takes e-waste for free from the public in five bins outside his shop. People can drop their junk off anytime. Like some other local recyclers, he doesn’t take TVs, which have less value.
The rest of the stuff is gold — sometimes literally. The 600 computers stacked up on the cement floor will all be checked. A handful of people will work for three days, plugging them in, noting their memory and making sure they boot up. Those that don’t work, or are too old, will be taken to an operating table set with an Exacto knife, drill, screwdriver and hammer.
They’ll be split open, their parts ending up in a series of 4-foot-high cardboard boxes. The contents are scrawled in Sharpie ink: motherboards, wire and hard drives. Hard drives are resold and used. The motherboards are sold for gold. The wire is sold to someone else, who melts it down.
What’s in the new E-waste recycling law
The law requires electronics manufacturers to recycle 43 million pounds of e-waste between April and January 2011. The manufacturers have to pay for the recycling and prove that they’ve recycled their share. How much each company is required to recycle is based on how much they sell. If they don’t recycle enough, they face fines.
The goals increase for the next two years.
What’s covered: computers, monitors, televisions, keyboards, mice, fax machines, optical scanners, printers, MP3 players, VCRs, DVD players, CD players, DVR, digital converter boxes, cable/satellite receivers and video game consoles.
The computers being processed Friday already had a buyer. Bruin often sells to other countries — a recent load of decade-old laptops went to construction workers in Dubai, he said.
An odd piece ends up on eBay. A tripod that looked like junk sold for $1,500. Old respirators mixed in with computers: more than $1,000 each. In another cement-floored room, stacks of video monitors were entombed in plastic. A decade ago, they sold for $900. But they’re still worth $100 a pop to stores with old-school security systems.
There’s a new twist: Nappa has started parking his trucks for schools and nonprofit groups to use for fundraisers. The idea was born by a band parent in the Fayetteville-Manlius school district.
It was so successful there that Clete Gualtieri, a counselor at Jamesville-DeWitt schools, decided to try it twice this year for the club he advises.
“In a day, we can raise more money than we could in 20 bake sales,” Gualtieri said. Between the two, they took in more than $3,000.
Tom Rhoads, executive director of OCRRA, said his agency is looking into reopening its electronics program under the new law. Before the doors were shut, OCRRA charged a take-back fee of $10. If it reopened with manufacturers paying the bill, it would be free.
Whether OCRRA gets involved or not, Rhoads said the new law will change the landscape of e-waste recycling in New York. It will keep millions of pounds of hazardous waste out landfills and incinerators.
He and others are concerned about whether the operations will actually recycle or resell the computers and televisions instead of sending them to developing countries, where they are often burned or landfilled.
But Rhoads said that because big-name manufacturers — Toshiba, Sony and Apple — all have a stake in the recycling, so they won’t let that happen.
“You just can’t afford to be on the front page of the newspaper or ‘60 Minutes’ talking about how your (recycled waste) ended up going to some third-world location,” Rhoads said.
The industry has its other hazards. Nappa pleaded guilty last week to giving a New Jersey employee $1,600 in connection with computer auctions there. He was ordered to pay a $46,000 fine. Nappa said he paid the official to make sure his truck was loaded properly after receiving several loads that didn’t match what he’d bid on. Other workers in that program were charged with redirecting surplus items for personal gain, according to news accounts.
About 20 television and electronics manufacturers, including Toshiba and Panasonic, formed a company called MRM to run electronics recycling programs. They use local companies to do it, and make sure the goals are met in states where they operate.
Newtech Recycling, which has a branch in Syracuse, just began working with MRM in New Jersey. That state’s recycling law is set to start Jan. 1.
Jim Entwistle, of Newtech, said he expects MRM will be developing plans for working with contractors across New York, too. He hopes to get some of the new business in both states.
Unlike Bruin’s recycling, Entwistle’s company mostly breaks down whatever it gets. Wire goes to a refinery, glass gets melted down. MRM certifies that its contractors don’t send their scrap overseas to places where it’s burned or dumped.
Friday, forklifts buzzed and packing tape squealed in the open concrete room at Bruin Computer. There was no time to lose. They needed to finish sorting the load so they could set up portable tables and power strips to plug in every computer.
And they had to make room for more. Another truck was already on its way.
Contact Marnie Eisenstadt at meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 470-2246.