Recycling Reinvented

WRAP Recycle Week 2018 begins on 24th September and has got us thinking about how we can bring value to waste. Keeping components in use for as long as possible, repairing, repurposing and redelivering are all great ways to deal with old equipment. However, everything breaks down eventually. So we are always interested in creative ways of dealing with products at end of life, seeing parts as a resource and recovering good materials from them.

E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream on the planet and only 15% of it is recycled. While we might think that servers, storage and networking represent a tiny proportion of this, it’s worth noting that 11.45 million server units were shipped worldwide in 2017. The refresh rate on these new servers is 2-4 years and speeding up all the time.

Techbuyer’s core business of quality refurbishment and redeployment saves a lot of servers, storage and networking from landfill. We do everything we can to support our customers in making the refurb choice. Our three-year warranty gives the equipment another lifespan. This is further enhanced with maintenance contracts, hardware as a service and our guaranteed buy back scheme. The question we are asking ourselves is: “what happens next?”.

Remanufacturing would be the best solution. If we were somehow able to pull apart all those tiny components that have been micro-manufactured - and then reorder to the latest and greatest model – then we would be able to get the most of advancing technology without losing out on virgin materials.

With this in mind, it was great to hear news from the Critical Raw Material (CRM) recovery programme that shows just that. Private industry, academic institutions and WRAP came together to look at innovative ways of improving on ways to recover trace elements in e-waste, like gold and silver as well as much lesser known materials like antimony, cobalt, tantalum. Part of the process involved de-soldering circuit boards, proving that micro-“demanufacturing” has already been done.

Advances are also being made on recovering more than one material from the recycling process. Another trial at CRMrecovery managed to extract cobalt, silver and gold from circuit boards with the same process of either acid or treatment from multiple microbes. This is helpful because it suggests it might be possible to recover many more materials from ICT if we just carry out the right research with the right positive attitude.

Even more exciting, though, is the possibility of looking at materials at their molecular level and using one stream to manufacture something completely different. This is something that one academic at the University of New South Wales has already achieved with car parts. In 2011, Veena Sahajwalla shared technology showing that using old tyres as fuel in steel production can significantly reduce energy costs. She is a firm believer that waste is a resource, and should be seen as such. E-waste is her latest focus.

“Metals can be repurposed over and over and even many plastics can be reformed and reused a number of times,” she says.

The micro-factory at her research lab has proved as much. One small furnace separates metallic parts into several valuable materials. Another one reforms the plastic into a high-grade filament suitable for 3D printing. Meanwhile, the facility has developed a new process for transforming mixed waste glass into high-value building materials without the need for re-melting.

Projects like these are exciting because they signal the pathway towards a more circular economy. As material recovery technology advances, so can a design attitude that supports reuse and remanufacture. Environmental messaging sometimes focuses on the negative messages, but projects like these show there is a lot to celebrate too. Dedication, creativity and a willingness to work together are a powerful mix. We are looking forward to being involved in any way we can.