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Virtual gold mine
02-MAY-2005

Canadian company digs into resource recovery

While it is cheaper to simply landfill,
partially recycle or export our end-of-life electronics to developing countries,
state-of-the-art technologies such as Noranda¿s recycling facilities in North
America are starting to make inroads in setting global standards for environmentally
sound recycling of WEEE.

Traditionally, the primary source of feed for metal smelters and refineries
has been concentrates mined from the ground. Copper, lead, nickel, aluminium
and cadmium produced from smelting operations are then used to make new products.
While this model has worked well for centuries, the way in which we view our
metals resources is changing. Today, we recognize that once products containing
metals reach the end of their lives, we can recycle them to recapture their
resources. One of the uniquely attractive characteristics of metals is that
they can be recycled repeatedly without losing any of their inherent properties,
unlike plastics and paper fibres. Each kilogram of metal lost to landfill increases
the need for more mines to feed society¿s need for metals. Conversely, the more
we recycle, the less dependent on new mining projects we are.

Until now, the link between multi-material products and smelters has been tenuous
at best, given the complexity of the demanufacturing process. Noranda, an international
mining and metals organization based in Canada, has been able to establish this
link by providing mechanical demanufacturing facilities that create distinct
commodity streams suitable for direct shipment to Noranda¿s smelters and refineries.

ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

Electronic scrap constitutes a figurative growing mountain, a virtual mine
created by the worldwide rush to re-equip with rapidly evolving new generations
of electronics. There has been much international focus on these growing mountains
of end-of-life electronics, from the perspective of volume of waste, loss of
resources and hazard management. Personal computers (PCs) are only part of this
mountain of obsolete electronics ¿ there are also old telephones, televisions,
VCRs, photocopiers and electronic games. If it weren¿t for a growing electronic
scrap recycling industry, more of these products could end up going to landfill,
providing no societal benefit and causing environmental damage through groundwater
contamination.

While statistics can be debatable, here are a few that highlight the magnitude
of the problem:

	¿	number of PCs sold between 1981 and 2000		835 million
	¿	number of PCs shipped globally in 2002		130 million
	¿	number of PCs that become obsolete in the US every year		30 million
	¿	number of DVD players sold since launch		110 million
	¿	number of PCs, TVs, fridges, washers and air conditioners produced in China in 2002		180 million
	¿	number of the same units in use in China		900 million
	¿	volume of WEEE estimated in Canada in 2005		225,000 tonnes

The early days of electronics recycling were relatively simple: the design
of older electronics and telecommunications products included significant volumes
of metals. The value of metals in the products more than exceeded the costs
of recycling, so business economics prevailed and the environmental and sustainable
benefits of recycling were simply fortuitous add-ons. Throughout the 1980s,
manufacturers of electronics and telecommunications started to design products
more resource-efficiently, resulting in much lower metal contents. While good
for resource conservation, this completely changed the economics of recycling.
An interesting dilemma arose, not too dissimilar from other waste/recycling
industries ¿ the value of the resources in the recyclables did not cover the
cost of environmentally sound recycling. The result: suppliers of electronics
were now asked to pay for recycling services.

NORANDA'S TECHNOLOGY

At this stage, Noranda stepped back and took a hard look at the electronics
recycling business. The company had a unique smelting technology that allowed
it to process multi-material products, and a good understanding of the environment,
and of the health and safety risks associated with WEEE recycling. Yet was the
world ¿ and in particular the North American market ¿ ready to pay for recycling?

What Noranda discovered was that between the proliferation of electronic sales,
the growing volumes of end-of-life electronics and an increasing awareness of
the hazards present in some of the electronics, there was indeed a need for
an environmentally sound end-of-life electronics recycling infrastructure.

The focus on WEEE escalated when the international spotlight highlighted the
fact that much of the WEEE from the Western world (an estimated 50%¿80%) was
being shipped to developing countries, with their low transport costs, cheap
labour and relaxed environmental and hygiene laws. As a result, while many communities
in these jurisdictions were rapidly becoming the toxic dumping ground for the
world, it was clear that environmentally sound recycling infrastructures were
needed in North America and Europe to deal with these mounting piles of waste
electronics.

In response, Noranda designed a technical recycling solution that offered a
100% electronic hardware recycling service, without compromising its environmental
or industrial hygiene commitments. The process needed to be both economically
efficient yet environmentally sound.

Noranda built its first end-of-life electronics recycling plant in California
in 1996, the second in Tennessee in 2001 and the third in Ontario, Canada, in
2003. In total, the Noranda Recycling group of companies operates five electronics
recycling facilities in North America.

THE NORANDA PROCESS

While the majority of the Noranda process is a mechanical shredding and separation
model, the first part is a manual hazard triage. Many hazards are removed, including
the fluorescent bulbs commonly found in printers, scanners and laptops, because
they contain mercury vapour that would be released to the environment if introduced
to the shredders. All classes of batteries are removed, including lead¿acid,
rechargeable, alkaline and small lithium coin batteries on circuit boards inside
PCs. Some of these batteries contain chemicals that if released through shredding
can cause harm to either human health or to the environment. Other chemicals
can create fire risks during the shredding process. The last major class of
hazards removed is toners and inks, many of which are potentially carcinogenic.

After the hazard triage the material is introduced whole into a series of shredders
to reduce piece size. Large floor model photocopiers, for example, are introduced
at the start of the process and are reduced to 5 cm pieces. This level of size
reduction allows for optimal material separation through a series of technologies
including magnetic separation, eddy current separation and sand flow separation.
By the end of the process, 100% of the hardware has been separated into various
clean commodity streams. Along with the hazards, these commodity streams are
sent on to various Noranda operations (for the copper- and lead-bearing materials)
or to processors qualified through a series of rigid standards and audits.

The copper and precious metal fines, circuit boards and copper/plastics
are sent to Noranda¿s copper smelter to recover copper, silver, gold, platinum,
palladium, selenium, tellurium, cadmium and nickel. The steel output goes directly
to a steel foundry. The aluminium output goes directly to an aluminium smelter.

Brampton ¿ quick facts Noranda¿s third end-of-life electronics recycling plant in North America was set up in August 2003 in Brampton, Ontario, 30 km north of Toronto, within economic shipping range of two thirds of Canada¿s population and the US northeast. The factory is an 82,200 sq. ft (7640 m2) industrial facility with a capacity of approximately 2,000,000 lbs (900 tonnes) per month , and processes the following equipment: Computers and peripherals Network hardware Modems CD and DVD ROMs Tape and disk drives Circuit boards CD writers Office equipment Copiers Video recorders DVD players/writers Mainframes and workstations Pagers Telephones Cellular phones Typewriters Fax machines Audio/video equipment VCRs Printers and plotters The outputs from Brampton are shown in Figure A. Figure A. Typical WEEE outputs from the Brampton facility

The glass tubes from monitors, containing 4¿7 lbs (1.8¿3.2 kg) of lead each,
are separated and shipped to Noranda¿s lead smelter in New Brunswick, Canada.
There the lead is recovered and the silica in the glass is a beneficial fluxing
agent.

Each hazard stream and commodity is tracked to its final resting place, either
within the Noranda group of companies, or with third-party vendors. If a primary
vendor is not the final resting place of the material, Noranda will audit downstream
until that point.

Noranda Recycling has the capacity to process approximately 70 million lbs
(31,750 tonnes) of WEEE annually. This includes computers, peripherals, photocopiers,
fax machines, telephones, telecom equipment, modems, VCRs, TVs , DVDs and other
consumer electronics.

History Noranda has been recycling metals since the 1940s. During the Second World War, Canada was short of copper units and Noranda sought ways to increase copper production by recycling copper shell casings. In the decades following the war, Noranda recycled relatively small volumes of simple metal-bearing products such as copper wiring and tubing. A turning point for the company came in 1976, when the mine feeding Noranda¿s Horne copper smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Québec, was depleted. The smelter processing the concentrate from this mine, employing about 3000 people, no longer had a captive source of feed. Rather than close the smelter, a team of technical experts was brought in to find ways of keeping the smelter operational. What they discovered, quite serendipitously, was that the technology developed by Noranda at the Horne smelter was unique and could allow the smelter to process complex, multi-material products to produce metals. A decision was made to keep the smelter operational and to focus not only on processing concentrates mined from other regions of the world, but to also focus on producing metals from recyclable feeds. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Noranda focused on recycling products and scrap from industries such as copper tubing and wiring, photographic, automotive, petroleum catalyst, telecommunications and electronics. Noranda is a world leader in the recycling of complex copper and precious metal materials, including electronics. In any given year, approximately 15%¿20% of the feed into Noranda¿s copper operations comes from recyclable feeds. The value of metal recycled through its copper metallurgical operations fluctuates between CAN$200¿400 million dollars, depending on metals prices and exchange rates. If Noranda¿s recycling facilities were likened to a mine, they would produce 5% of all the copper mined in Canada, 5% of all the gold, 14% of all the silver and 37% of all the platinum-group metals.

ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND MANAGEMENT (ESM)

One of the key challenges for environmentally sound recyclers is unsound competition.
Noranda¿s facilities operate in jurisdictions where both landfill and export
are legally permitted, and WEEE recycling is not yet mandated. When organizations
with WEEE make decisions on end-of-life management, the temptation is to choose
the cheapest option. In order to provide environmentally-sound recycling that
minimizes liability for owners of the WEEE, they must be willing to pay more.
This is where the role of government is critical. The following is a brief description
of the minimum ESM standards that need to form part of any regulatory or voluntary
programme:

• integration with smelters and refineries that are fully permitted and operate
  to best practices globally


• fully permitted by local authorities 


• downstream accountability: there must be a documented, audited tracking
  mechanism for each output stream from a mechanical shredding separation facility
  to its final resting place


• SO 14001 or equivalent


• 100% hardware-recycling programme


• no landfill


• no export to developing countries or to facilities that do not demonstrate
  ESM as defined here


• extensive hygiene and training programmes, including regular air testing
  and monitoring, dust collection through a baghouse system, documented frequent
  training of all employees whether permanent or temporary


• secured destruction, including extensive security, metal detection, close
  circuit cameras, witnessed destruction to ensure that both sensitive data
  and hardware are completely destroyed and recycled.

POLICY OPTIONS

Ideally, government has a relatively simple role to play in the development
of workable WEEE policy. First, governments must mandate definate recycling
targets for WEEE. Secondly, environmentally sound standards must be developed
to eliminate unsound practices such as landfill and export to non-sound facilities
in developing countries. Thirdly, stewardship laws that clearly establish financial
responsibility for paying for sound recycling need to be mandated by law. Lastly,
governments themselves must lead by example to ensure that WEEE generated at
all levels of government is recycled soundly. Once this framework is established,
then the market will start to respond.

BEST PRACTICE AND POLICY MUST GO HAND-IN-HAND

Despite their many benefits, it is still all too easy for most of us to ignore
the fact that we are still too focused on the cost of our new PC, cellphone
or electronic game to be interested in paying for its full life-cycle management.
While it is cheaper to landfill, partially recycle or export our end-oflife
electronics to developing countries, state-of-the-art technologies such as Noranda¿s
recycling facilities are starting to make very positive inroads in setting global
standards for environmentally sound recycling of WEEE.

We are still too focused on the cost of our new PC to be interested in paying for its full life-cycle management

Paradoxically, the recycling industry has forged ahead of regulatory agencies
in North America. While WEEE policy proponents claim that there is not sufficient
recycling infrastructure in North America, it is ironic that Noranda¿s recycling
capacity remains under-utilized. There simply aren¿t enough organizations that
voluntarily choose the most environmentally and technically sound best practices,
because of the higher costs involved when compared with less sound options.
Even for those who do, few incentives are offered. The playing field must be
levelled and ESM standards dictating best recycling practices must be set by
governments. Until this is done, organizations like Noranda may lose interest
in continuing to pursue R&D to improve and enhance recycling technologies. And
that would be a shame.

Cindy Thomas is Plant Manager at Noranda Recycling,
Ontario, Canada.

e-mail: cindy.thomas@toronto.norfalc.com

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