Even after a faithful computer has generated its last worksheet or a loyal cellphone has made its final call, their contents live on in the form of valuable resources mined from their remains.

Those resources are as good as gold for Sims Recycling Solutions of Brampton, Ont., which processes about 70 million pounds of recyclable raw material annually from variety of electronic devices, ranging from handheld devices to photocopiers, says Cindy Coutts, Sims’ director of end-of-life electronics.

The four-year-old facility, part of Sims Group Ltd. of Australia, was a division of Toronto-based Noranda Inc. before Noranda’s 2005 amalgamation with Falconbridge Ltd., also of Toronto, which in turn was acquired by Switzerland-based Xstrata PLC a year later. The resulting corporate entity was purchased by Sims Group this year.

Given the staggering consumption of electronic devices globally, overtaxed landfills and increased environmental awareness, recycling of waste electronics and electrical equipment (WEEE) is indeed big business — and has the potential to expand rapidly.

Estimates indicate that the volume of end-of-life electronics in Canada has more than doubled over the past six years. About 30 million personal computers in the U.S. become obsolete each year. And electronic devices have proliferated in recent years — including cellphones, wireless devices, DVDs and CD-ROMs, and printers — suggesting a solid future for WEEE recycling.

As it stands, only 11% of all computers in North America are recycled, according to the U.S-based National Safety Council. Although that is surprisingly low, considering increased global environmental awareness, Coutts believes that such a low estimate is actually overly optimistic.

“We see about 1% of what’s out there,” says Coutts of the North American electronic devices forwarded to the Brampton plant for recycling.

Historically, the value of the metals recycled from WEEE exceeded the cost of recycling. As such, recycling fees did not need to be levied. However, that changed in the 1980s, as devices were produced more efficiently and metallic content was curbed to reduce costs.

At the same time, there was increased focus on increasing WEEE: the majority of the devices were being shipped overseas, where a mixture of low transport costs, cheap labour and relaxed environmental and hygiene laws were producing a breeding ground for toxic dumping.

Coutts estimates that 50%-80% of WEEE continues to be exported to countries, such as China, where it’s not unusual to find women and children crudely harvesting components from devices and discarding the residue into lakes or rivers.

Unlike the situation in many developing countries, Sims’ recycling process provides certification that the electronic device has been recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

“One hundred per cent of the electronic hardware is recycled,” says Coutts. “Zero per cent is sent to landfill and zero per cent is exported.”

A fully permitted facility, the Sims plant has extensive employee health and safety safeguards, including continuous air sampling and chemical analyses of goods entering the door to help protect its 35-member workforce.

Significantly, the recycler’s above-ground operation uses less energy in comparison to a traditional below-ground mine that would extract many of the same minerals as the Sims facility recovers. As well, the land disruption in the mining process is significant. “The environmental footprint from an in-ground mine is huge,” explains Coutts.

Sims’ recycling process begins with a shrink-wrapped pallet containing a variety of WEEE. The pallet is weighed and its relevant data entered on an inventory control program. The pallet is assigned a bar code, allowing it to be tracked throughout the recycling process.

The materials on the pallet are sorted and disassembled so hazardous components — such as batteries and potentially carcinogenic toners and inks — can be removed in an environmentally sound manner. Hazardous items are recycled through audited third-party hazardous-waste disposal/recycling sites. For example, cathode-ray tubes containing lead are sent to a smelter in New Brunswick for lead recovery.

After the removal of hazardous components, a shredding system reduces the material to a maximum size of five centimetres. Conveyors transport the resulting small fragments to magnetic separators that separate the metals from other materials. Other processes separate aluminum from copper and plastics. The copper/plastic components are sent to an Xstrata copper smelter for non-ferrous metal recovery. This converts the them to base metals that are eventually recovered at an Xstrata copper/precious-metals refinery in Quebec. The steel and aluminum components are sent to approved aluminum facilities.

@page_break@“[The steel and aluminum] go to vendors we have chosen according to our environmental standards,” says Coutts. These vendors are audited to ensure that materials are not sent to a landfill nor exported. “They go to vendors that are responsible,” she adds.

The entire process at the Sims plant is monitored by closed-circuit cameras located above the line. “There are a number of bells and whistles in the process,” explains Coutts.

The majority of packaging is recycled, including cardboard, polystyrene and polyethylene. Only about 5% of the packaging is non-recyclable and sent to a landfill. Even the dust collected from the process is filtered out and sent to the Xstrata smelter for recovery of nine metals.

Most of the electronic devices sent to Sims for recycling originate from larger corporate entities. Although the company is a volume-based recycler, says Coutts, the plant occasionally receives small quantities of WEEE from individuals who are sometimes surprised the recycling service comes with a fee.

“Materials are from three sources — original equipment manufacturers, Fortune 500 companies and governments,” says Coutts.

Currently, these organizations are not legally compelled to recycle electronic goods but do so either for the assurance of data security or out of environmental responsibility.

“It’s all voluntary, “says Coutts. “It’s just companies doing the right thing.”

WEEE was added to Ontario’s Waste Diversion Act in 2004. As a result, the minister of the environment has requested that Waste Diversion Ontario, a non-Crown corporation created under the act, develop a waste-diversion program for WEEE. This would legally require companies to recycle WEEE. A Phase 1 proposal from the WDO is expected by Feb. 1, 2008.

Coutts is hopeful a responsible recycling program will be developed out of the drawn-out process.

“We have to have good standards and make sure people don’t export,” says Coutts. Currently, she says, just four provinces — Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan — have legislation in place.

Competition domestically for Sims’ large-scale electronics recycling is minimal, says Coutts. The newest and smallest of Sims’ six electronics-recycling plants in North America, the Brampton location is currently running one shift per day and thus can accommodate greater recycling volumes.

But with legislation on the horizon, a population becoming increasingly environmentally aware and a facility ready for more business, Coutts is anticipating, healthy growth in Sims’ revenue.

She is also excited about Sims’ Tennessee plant’s foray into the separation of plastics. Slated to be operational later this year, the Tennessee plant will use an infra-red process that will be fundamental to electronic recycling, says Coutts. As plastics require a more scientific process, she adds, that process will be ‘infinitely more complex’ than that used in the Brampton plant. IE