e-Cycle - Web Log
e-Cycle is World's First NEGATIVE Waste Recycling Facility Posted on Monday March 8, 2010 @ 11:06am All the talk these days amongst businesses big and small is "zero waste". A lot of big corporations are presently trying to impress you with this claim, ostensibly meaning that they produce absolutely no waste during the operation of their business, or more likely they offset their waste production with some usually cheap gimmick that only gets exposed on the nightly news in a short segment that will be the topic of discussion for about ten minutes before the next distraction comes along. At e-Cycle, we take this commitment not as a slogan to make our customers feel happy about us, but because it's how we roll. e-Cycle not only doesn't produce practically any waste (the only thing we presently don't recycle is what goes down the toilet), we actually remove waste from the local landfill. That's right. Once in a while, someone who doesn't find out about e-Cycle in time tries to sneak something electronic into the landfill. Set aside the fact that this is illegal under current laws, the more upsetting thing is that it makes no sense to put perfectly good commodities and materials that someone expended a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears to extract from the Earth back into it. Through this arrangement, by actually removing items from the landfill and then properly recycling them, we can in effect claim negative waste. How many other businesses, let alone recyclers, can make the same claim? Probably not many, if any. Bottom line: everything, and I mean everything, that comes to e-Cycle gets either refurbished and re-used, or recycled. Nothing goes into the trash! Cardboard and paper that come into us, which we don't handle, go into our onsite recycling bins. Even broken pallets are sent off to a local wood recycling facility off Greenville Road. So, next time someone tries to impress you with their "zero waste" pledge, tell them that Negative Waste is where it's at, and you heard it first here. ...		e-Cycle Blog Items/Fees Appointment Find Us Contact FAQ

We've hidden a geocache at our business. Can you find it?

Here's some stuff that you may or may not find interesting and/or useful. We apologize in advance for boring you.

Q. Why do you need my name and address?
A. Because the State of California wants it. Right. Ok, so when you buy a new TV or computer monitor, you pay an extra tax that goes towards recycling your old unit. It's just like how the CRV (California Redemption Value) system works with cans and bottles, except in this case you don't get any money back, but then it doesn't cost you anything to recycle your discarded stuff. At least in theory. It's complicated. Anyway, we get our cut of that revenue for recycling the TVs and display devices you bring to us. That's how we pay the bills.

The State would like to make sure it is only paying for the disposal of CRTs that were sold (and therefore taxed) in the State of California. And so it requires us to log your name and address so that we can be sure you're a California resident and everything is on the up & up.

Now, if you have 5 or more display devices, we're going to need your phone number as well. The State, being broke, is really paranoid these days about paying out fraudulent claims. Heck, it's worried about paying off legitimate claims for that matter, but that's a story for another day. Anyway, they might call you. And ask you if you recycled so many monitors on such & such date, etc. Kind of annoying. Sorry. Please excuse us if we get a factoid off by a digit or letter or two, like a misspelled name, or a munged address, or a slightly off count. Sometimes the paper logs get soiled, crumpled, wet, run over by the forklift, or suffer from nothing other than poor handwriting. We try our best.

If you do get a call from the State, please tell them we would like our money already. They'll know what you're talking about.

Oh, we don't add your information to any mailing list. It is used only for the above described verification process. We wouldn't want anyone selling our information to someone else, and we respect you in that way as well.

Q. What happens to my stuff after I drive off?
A. We get to work. Computers are either refurbished (if they're "current"), shredded (if they're "obsolete"), or added to our computer history archive (if it's ancient, quaint, or downright cool). And by shred, we mean we manually take apart a computer part by part. We then generate a pile of each of: plastic, metal, motherboards, memory, CPUs, adaptor cards, hard drives, floppy drives, optical (CD, DVD) drives, wire, power supplies, and miscellaneous (speakers, fans, etc.) Everything is sorted into individual bins and sold as scrap at pennies by the pound. That material meets up with other similar material, and all of it is stuffed in large cargo containers and shipped off to factories all around the world, probably most in China, probably none in the U.S., because we foolishly outsourced a critical portion of our manufacturing base, but again, that's a rant for another day. The good news is that your old stuff becomes the new iPhone you'll buy next year. The circle of life, in digital.

Monitors and TVs, too much hassle. We ship these off to a plant in San Jose that tears down the monitors into their constituent parts (much as described above) and then those raw materials make it into your new Christmas presents.

We scrap all appliances that we take in down to the motor, ripping out every last bit and throwing the pieces into sorted bins for metal reclamation. It's a lot of work. It's why we charge a fee for the service. Someone has to do it. You're welcome.

Select other items like printers, office equipment, general household items, and stuff that's otherwise not cumbersome and unprofitable to fuss with is torn asunder and the resultant material sorted into bins, etc.

The bottom line: Virtually 100% of what comes into e-Cycle is recycled. We generate very little trash, which is basically what gets thrown in our bathroom waste basket or flushed down the toilet.

We want to emphasize one thing. It is this: Frugality is a mindset. It's a way of life. It's a virtue. It's what we practice. It is the e-Cycle way.

Q. Do you take ... ?
A. Probably, yes. Anything that runs on electrons and then some. Whether you plug it in the wall or plug batteries into it, we take it.

Speaking of batteries, we will take small amounts, and by that we mean a handful or so, but please, please, take your buckets to Radio Shack. They will accept those for free and apparently they have some recycling scheme in place. I think. I hope. Someone should ask them. Anyway, they take them, so...there ya go.

On the other hand, we do take rechargeable batteries of all kinds: NiCads, NIMHs, Lion...oops, sorry, nerd speak. I'm talking about your old rechargable batteries for your cell phone, your cordless phone, your laptop, your digital camera, etc. We'll take those.

So yeah, anything electronic or electrical. Bring it.

Also, got scrap plastic or metals cluttering up the place? We'll take it. Bring it here. We have large containers for recycling all kinds of plastic and metals. All this stuff will go back into new products and things.

Q. Don't you guys just dump this crap in rivers in China?
A. We can guarantee you this: we only deal with companies within the State of California. All of our stuff gets dispersed into local processing and refining operations. It basically stays local. The refined or raw material does end up in some far off land (it could be here in the U.S., but again, I digress) but at that point it is valuable raw material, not junk, so the prospect of it ending up as someone else's pollution problem is not likely. The Chinese are buying this stuff from us. It's not like they're just letting their country be one big landfill. They need this material to build new products to keep Walmart shelves stocked.

Also, there are international treaties in place which are effective to some degree (how much I can't say, as I haven't researched it) at preventing illegal dumping of e-waste. Look, let's be square: does it happen? Yes, I'm sure of it. There's always going to be the rotten scoundrel who is only after the almighty dollar (soon renminbi) and will "look the other way". I think the problem has lessened, but it still goes on as 60 Minutes documents.

Or does it? Let's examine that story. I just watched it. I'm not surprised that 60 Minutes chose to sensationalize the story. Their journalistic standards have long since evaporated away, and all they do now is glorified puff pieces. Anyway, that aside, the ambush of the Executive Recycling CEO, as bad a spokesperson as he is, was unfair and, truly, based on facts that are at best dubious, in my opinion. Look, the government tries to make itself look like it's spending our tax dollars appropriately by periodically making examples of various businesses that are just trying to turn a fair buck.

Let's look at the core accusation: shipping complete CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) to Hong Kong. First of all, why is this illegal? I'm not really sure, but this is more a rhetorical question anyway. The whole thing is a farce because, had Executive Recycling crushed the CRTs into glass, then it would not have been illegal to ship them to Hong Kong in that condition (as broken glass). So what's the difference? I'm sure there was some sufficiently appropriate reason to make this distinction, but in the end, the glass gets to China, where the manufacturing is. If we encouraged more manufacturing here in the U.S., we might alleviate some of these issues, but again, there I go...

In reality, all this company is really guilty of is inefficiency. They could've sent the CRTs crushed and gotten more CRT glass in there. However, the customer in Hong Kong may have wanted them whole for a reason. Whatever, the whole thing stinks. There is no real crime here. Certainly nothing worth smearing this guy's name and business over.

Other elements of this story bug me as well. I'll be the first to admit, the pollution situation in that Chinese town where they do the dismantling and stuff is a terrible issue, but that's a Chinese issue. The Chinese know what's going on. They could put a stop to it if they wanted. The reality is, your fancy cell phone with the built-in video camera and GPS and wireless internet wouldn't be so cheap if that pollution wasn't happening. So who's to blame here, hmmmm? I know, I know, cheap shot. But the thing that really reeks is the stupid theatrics the 60 Minutes producers put on for the camera. Maybe the reason they got attacked in that scrapyard is because the owners saw that a bunch of uninvited trespassers were on their damn property! What would you do if you went outside and a bunch of weirdos with cameras were poking around the junk all over your backyard? I mean, really.

Anyway, we know this: e-Cycle doesn't export CRTs, and the companies to which we send our CRTs definitely dismantle and crush them right here in the Bay Area because I've seen their plants and processes firsthand and I know the owners of those plants.

I don't know about the other guy, but you can trust us at e-Cycle.

Q. Do you have any other opinions?
A. Yes, but I'll be writing about them in other blog postings. I'm sure I've covered just about all the usual stuff. I'll add to this as common queries come calling.

Remember: first you reduce, then you re-use, then (and only then), you recycle.

Thanks for your time, and your old stuff!

I entered my office this morning and once again I'm greeted with a pile of what was once living trees, now rendered into pulp and printed with a bunch of obnoxious advertisements for services I don't now and probably will never need.

I'm so tired of having to step over this crap almost every time I come into my office. When I want to order a pizza, I'll search the Web. I don't need a coupon for DirecTV because I just cancelled my service (can't afford it any longer, and I only watched 1% of what it offered anyway, not to mention I grew tired of watching commercials for something for which I was already paying). If I want to watch a movie, I'll find it on the Web, or at the public library, which has a fine selection. The next time I need new tires for my truck, I'll search the Web. And trust me, I'll likely never need to wax my bikini line, but if I do, I'll find that service on the Web.

Do you get it, advertisers? I don't want your gawd damned unsolicited advertisements littering my entryway anymore. When I want to find your business, I will, on the Internet, which is where you should do all your advertising, because it's the year 2009, not 1909.

And you, USPS, you utterly execrable and yet typical government service that makes all kinds of money off this crap that you shove through my mail slot yet can't seem to make any kind of profit and constantly go begging to the Congress for more funds to waste on moving dead trees from Point A to Point Z.

Today, I am putting the USPS on notice that I will no longer accept this garbage. I don't even want to expend the modicum of energy it takes to move this pile of unwelcome trash from my floor to the paper recycling bin. Because that's not the point. The point is that literally hundreds of dollars and tons of pollution went in to the process of taking a living tree, killing it, rendering it into pulp, rendering pulp into paper, applying lots and lots of ink to it (there's a whole other cycle of waste right there), then moving it from the printing press to the post office to my business to my waste paper recycling bin to the garbage man to the recycling plant and then (ostensibly and hopefully), back to the paper mill to start the cycle over again. And that's just for one single parcel of this crap.

No, I will not be a part of this silly, idiotic, illogical and completely STUPID process any longer. So to that end, this is the sign that is now affixed above my mail slot:

When you bring in a television or computer monitor to recycle at e-Cycle, you sometimes ask why it's necessary to record your name and address. Good question!

We require this information because we are operating under the State of California's SB20/50 legislation which reimburses e-Cycle for any CRTs (cathode ray tubes, i.e. televisions and monitors) or other display devices (LCD screens, plasma TVs, projection televisions, laptops, etc.) that we collect. The funds for this reimbursement come out of the additional fees that you pay when you buy a new television, computer screen, laptop, etc.

To ensure that the display devices that we collect at e-Cycle come from California, and that therefore only California-sourced display devices are reimbursed by California state generated funds, the State requires us to collect name and address information from our customers so that the State can be granted some minimal form of assurance that they are not paying the way for recycling of out-of-state devices. So in order for us to get properly reimbursed for the free service we provide to our customers, and so that we can continue to provide this free service, we must collect your name and address (and sometimes your phone number if you're a business dropping off five or more display devices).

Once we collect this information it goes into our computer database, which is used to generate the logs we send to the State. We don't know exactly what the State does with this information (we're going to try to find out and report back to you) but it is assumed they randomly sample and perhaps audit the names and addresses through some form of contact to keep us collectors honest.

We want to make it very clear that we do not use this information for any marketing purposes, and we absolutely do not disseminate or sell your name/address information to anyone else. We consider it private information to be used only to satisfy the requirements of the SB20/50 program.

As always, we are happy to provide further answers to any questions or concerns you might have. If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address and telephone number are on our contact page.

The e-Cycle Blog is a way for our staff to connect and communicate with the local community to explain our operations and the electronic recycling industry in general. Until we implement a comments and forum section, please feel free to respond by e-mail to any item posted in the blog.