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[post_content] => The average American throws away 44 pounds of electronic waste a year--that’s 100 iPhones worth of waste! Furthermore, only about 12.5% of electronic waste is recycled each year. Even though these numbers are staggering, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the future of electronic recycling. Here are four things you should know.
1. E-Waste Is Not The Same Thing As E-Scrap
Oftentimes electronic waste and electronic scrap are lumped together under electronic recycling as if the terms are interchangeable. However, this is certainly not the case! While e-waste encompasses the old electronics thrown away to the landfill, e-scrap is electronics that are properly dropped off at a recycling facility. And you don't need to search too hard to find a facility, either. Some electronics stores like Best Buy will accept your old equipment. These scraps have immense value, whether they are recycled into raw materials or reused into new electronics. Recycling your electronics sustainably is extremely important especially when you consider how detrimental landfills are to the environment, affecting global warming from harmful greenhouse gases.
2. E-Scrap Can Be Recycled Into Raw Materials
Once you give your electronics to an electronic recycling facility, some are deemed too old or broken for reuse and are stripped for raw material. This demanufacturing process begins with the dismantling of computers, mobile devices, TVs, and other electronics. This involves the breakdown and separation of materials like metals, circuit boards, batteries, and hard drives. After demanufacturing, machines shred various materials to reduce their size and to enable further separation to extract metals and plastics. Once the products are dismantled and shredded, their parts are packaged and labeled to ensure safe shipping. These commodities then become the raw materials that can be used in the manufacturing of new products.
3. You Can Buy Recycled Electronics
Many recycled electronics actually just need a bit of TLC to make them candidates for reuse (truly proving that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure!). This is done by extracting and replacing parts if needed, running numerous tests to guarantee that the machine is 100% working, and completely wiping their memory to ensure data privacy. Once these products are completely repaired and refurbished, they are put online for resale. This is an amazing way to shop sustainably for high-quality and affordable electronic products!
4. Electronic Recycling Plays A Crucial Role In Our Future
More electronics are sold each year, which means more electronics need to be recycled. In fact, the United Nations estimates that global e-waste volumes could increase by as much as 39% to 74.7 million tons a year by 2030. With this in mind, sustainable e-recycling is more important than ever, and the world is beginning to realize this. The medals from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were even made entirely from recycled electronics. Furthermore, the increasing popularity of electric vehicles will eventually lead to the need to sustainably recycle these cars. The parts of these cars are bigger and more complex than what is found in smaller electronics. Luckily, with the infrastructure already in place to recycle batteries from small electronics, e-recycling companies like Regency feel that they are up for the challenge.
[post_title] => 4 Things You Should Know About Electronic Recycling
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[post_content] => In 2018, 69.1 million tons of municipal solid waste were recycled in the US. But have you ever thought about where these recycled materials go? Here are six unexpected uses for recycled materials.
1. Art
[caption id="attachment_13407" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Winner of the Recycled Art Exhibition's "Snow Play" Category Photo Credit: Arizona Daily Sun[/caption]
With recycled art, one person’s trash truly becomes another person’s treasure. Recycled art is about repurposing materials and nature conservation. As long as the materials used in the piece were discarded, there’s really no limit to what can be used and what the pieces can look like. The process of repurposing materials to create something new in art began with Pablo Picasso who specialized in collage art. He would paste together separate bits of paper, newsprint, and more to create a new image. The Recycled Art Movement has gained momentum within the past few decades, coinciding with the greater need for recycling. For example, the Recycled Art Exhibition in Flagstaff, Arizona takes place each year; their only requirement to participate in the exhibition is that your item must be made from at least 80% repurposed or recycled materials. Using plastics in painting not only helps eliminate waste but also sends a strong message to viewers about the benefits of conservation.
2. Phones and Laptops
[caption id="attachment_13409" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Recycled electronics to be used for new phones, computers, and more[/caption]
When you recycle your old electronics, they can actually be made into brand new phones, laptops, and more, instead of just sending them to a landfill! If you donate your old electronics to an electronic recycling facility, some are deemed too old or broken for reuse and are stripped for raw material. However, some recycled electronics just need a bit of TLC to turn them into brand new products, completed by companies like Regency Technologies. This is done by extracting and replacing parts if needed, running numerous tests to guarantee that the machine is completely working, and then wiping their memory to ensure data privacy. Once these products are completely repaired and refurbished, they are put online for resale.
3. Olympic Medals
[caption id="attachment_13410" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Medals from Recycled Electronics[/caption]
In addition to creating new electronics like phones and computers, recycled electronics can also be made into Olympic Medals! Winners of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games were awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals made entirely out of consumers' recycled electronics. The Tokyo Organizing Committee asked the Japanese public to donate their old phones, cameras, digital games, and laptops. The success of the project is clear with the impressive number of donated electronics: 158 million pounds of electronics, reduced to about 7,700 pounds of silver, 4,850 pounds of bronze, and 71 pounds of gold. Highly-trained contractors extracted the gold, silver, and bronze from the electronics and then classified, dismantled, and melted them down, turning them into medals.
4. Water Pipes
[caption id="attachment_13409" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Recycled electronics to be used for new phones, computers, and more[/caption]
In the United States alone, there are 2.2 million miles of underground pipes that deliver drinking water to millions of people. That’s enough pipes to wrap around the Earth 88 times! Luckily, some of these pipes are now being made out of recycled material. For example, ductile iron pipes can be 98% made from recycled material with companies like U.S. Pipe. These pipes use scrap metal which is iron and steel that was previously used from a wide variety of products like cars, washing machines, ships, and bridges. Ductile iron pipes are typically used for potable water and sewage distribution.In addition to ductile iron pipes, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes, primarily used for underground stormwater infrastructure and agricultural drainage, can be made using more than 40 percent recycled HDPE resin. HDPE resin is found in many common household items that people recycle such as shampoo bottles, toys, milk jugs, and grocery bags. To make one standard 20-foot length of 48-inch diameter HDPE pipe, it requires between 1,600 to 2,200 discarded bottles.
5. Playgrounds
HDPE materials, most commonly milk jugs, are also used in playground equipment in parks all around the country by some companies. For example, the company Superior Playgrounds creates decks, posts, and barriers that are 100 percent recycled from post-consumer plastic products. These recycled components are reinforced with fiberglass elements which make them much stronger than traditional wood playgrounds. They’re also protected from corrosion, rotting, and cracking and are resistant to salt spray, termites, oil, and fungus.Another example is the company Karkat, where approximately 95% of their recycled playgrounds are made from recycled materials. For every 8 milk jugs recycled, they can create 1 pound of lumber to create a playground.
6. Stadium Seats
[caption id="attachment_13413" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Stadium seats made from recycled ocean plastics Photo Credit: Sea Chairs[/caption]
Every year, eight million metric tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans. Recycling this plastic can be expensive and challenging, but necessary to preserve our marine habitats. Replacing fan seating in stadiums may be a possible solution to start decreasing the plastic in our oceans. Due to the strenuous wear & tear that the chairs endure, they are often replaced multiple times in the life of the venue creating thousands of tons of physical waste. Companies like Sea Chairs are attempting to fix this. Sea Chairs created the world’s first stadium seating made from recycled ocean plastics. While the seating is not currently in use, Liverpool soccer team Everton is planning on implementing this technology by 2023 as a way to make their new stadium more environmentally friendly.
[post_title] => 6 Unexpected Uses For Recycled Materials
[post_excerpt] => Unique ways to use recycled materials.
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[post_content] => Scientists from Tianjin University in China designed a prototype smartwatch that disintegrates when it is submerged in water. When the circuits were demonstrated in a prototype functional dissolvable smartwatch, the watch dissolved within 40 hours.
[caption id="attachment_13420" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Protoype of dissolvable smartwatch Photo Credit: American Chemical Society[/caption]
This technology was made to address and ameliorate the current challenge of recycling small electronics. The fast pace of technology innovations and the planned obsolescence of our electronics result in approximately 50 million tons of electronic waste per year. Furthermore, only 2% of e-waste is recycled material, yet it creates 70% of the toxic waste entering the landfill.While there are many electronic recycling programs in operation such as Regency Technologies, smaller consumer electronics are especially difficult to recycle because their parts must be salvaged by hand, not by a machine. Additionally, some of the steps to process these smaller electronics such as open burning and acid leaching can cause health issues and environmental pollution. Dissolvable devices that can break apart when needed solve these problems. This dissolvable smartwatch is possible because of the researchers’ development of two-metal nanocomposites. The zinc nanocomposite helps the circuits dissolve, and the silver nanowires make them highly conductive so they can power larger technology. In order to make the actual watch, they screen-printed the metallic solution onto pieces of polyvinyl alcohol, a polymer that degrades in water. The circuits were then solidified by adding droplets of water that facilitate chemical reactions, allowing them to evaporate. In the final creation, the smartwatch had multiple nanocomposite-printed circuit boards inside a 3D printed polyvinyl alcohol case.
[caption id="attachment_13422" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Timeline of smartwatch dissolving Photo Credit: American Chemical Society[/caption]
The smartwatch accurately measured a person’s heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and step count; the information was then sent to a cellphone app via Bluetooth. The watch withstood sweat, but the case and circuits dissolved completely within 40 hours. The only things not dissolved were the watch’s components, such as an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen and the resistors and capacitors that were integrated into the circuits.The researchers believe that their two-metal nanocomposites can be used to produce transient devices with the ability to match the same performance as commercial models. This dissolvable smartwatch marks a step into solving the worldwide challenges of small electronics waste.
Tomorrow's World Today
Innovation
Winner of the Recycled Art Exhibition's "Snow Play" Category
Recycled electronics to be used for new phones, computers, and more[/caption]
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Medals from Recycled Electronics[/caption]
Stadium seats made from recycled ocean plastics
Protoype of dissolvable smartwatch Photo Credit: American Chemical Society[/caption]
Timeline of smartwatch dissolving
