All You Need to Know About Electronic Component Recycling

Introduction

Electronics waste, generally known as e-scrap and e-waste, is the rubbish caused by surplus, broken, and obsolete electronic parts. Waste electronics are directly polluting eco-life systems around the world. E-waste will be re-generated from old industrial devices or electronic components into new products.

A Massive Number of E-waste and Its Dangers

We are accumulating e-waste at an alarming rate. According to a tech research company, Gartner, in 2015, approximately 1.9 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. However, about 422 million unused and unneeded mobile phones accelerated by the end of 2015 since Americans replaced their mobile phones on average every 18 months.

People usually replace electronic devices such as desktop computers or portable music players every 2 to 3 years. Others reach their end-of-life period from 4 to a maximum of 10 years. Annually, electronic waste approaches more than 20 million tons. Calculated solely in the US, Americans waste an amount of 3.4 million tons of old electronic devices and components every year.

Most of these electronic and industrial devices take up space in landfills, and just around 10 to 40% of those waste is recycled back to new electronic entities. The rest of the non-recycling e-waste, such as computers, cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices, can be the main reason for causing considerable problems to the surrounding environment. The toxic material like lead, mercury, and cadmium inside them leach out into the soil and water. For example, CRTs, which disappear after the flat-panel screen, consist of a certain amount of lead. LCD screen, whereas it contains mercury.

Several other toxic chemicals in e-waste, including arsenic and PCBs, also threaten the environment and human health. Furthermore, as rare-earth metal materials in cell phones are removed rather than reused, new raw materials must be mined to manufacture new products. In several nations, mining rare-earth materials is over-exploited, causing lower environmental standards in those areas. Therefore, in general, e-waste disposal relates to environmental issues.

Benefits of E-waste Recycling

Recycling e-waste plays a crucial role in improving both environmental and economic issues:

According to EPA, recycling one million laptops can save the energy to operate 3,657 household devices annually in the US. Moreover, recycling one million mobile phones can recover 75 lbs of gold, 772 lbs of silver, 35,274 lbs of copper, and 33 lbs of palladium.
According to the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, an amount of 1.5 tons of water, 530 lbs of fossil fuel, and 40 lbs of chemicals bring into the manufacturing of a single computer and monitor.
According to the Minerals Education Coalition, about 140 million cell phones are discarded annually, including approximately 2,100 metric tons of copper and 3.9 metric tons of gold.
Apple’s annual environmental report stated that 2,204 pounds of gold were recovered from recycled iPhones, iPads, and Macs in 2015. Besides gold, the company also collected 23 million pounds of steel, 13 million pounds of plastics, 12 million pounds of glass, 4.5 million pounds of aluminum, 3 million pounds of copper, and 6,600 pounds of silver. In other words, if all electronic industrial device manufacturers recycle their old devices, they can benefit considerably from it.

Generally, recycling e-waste empowers us to restore a variety of valuable metals and materials from old electronics, save our energy and natural and artificial resources, reduce soil and water pollution, and preserve landfill space.

The E-waste Recycling Process

A general process to recycle electronic waste can be challenging; however, there are three main steps to bring old electronic devices back to the market, which are the following:

Collection and Transportation: This is the initial stage of the recycling process, which collects the e-waste from landfill space or electronic manufacturers and delivers those waste to the recycling plants.
Shredding, Sorting, and Separation: After the collection and transportation process, materials in the e-waste must be divided into two groups: reused and non-reused commodities for re-generate new products. This is the foundation step of electronic recycling. Afterward, e-waste will be shredded to classify and separate the plastics from metals and internal circuitry. After this step, e-waste items are stocked into flat pieces as small as 100mm to prepare for further classification. Iron and steel are split from the waste using a powerful magnet system on the conveyor for different purposes. The separated steel materials are prepared to be sold as recycled steel on the market. With the other mechanical process, aluminum, copper, and circuit boards are set apart from the material stream for sale purposes. Afterward, glass is taken from plastics through the water separation technology process with a tremendous visual and hand inspection to ensure the quality of extracted materials. The final step in this separation process is detecting and removing any existing metal fragments from the plastics to purify the stream further.

Preparation for Sale: After the Shredding, Sorting, and Separation stage, the separated materials are ready for sale as usable raw materials to manufacture new products.

Ideas You Can Do With Your Old Electronic Components and Devices

When electronic devices approach their end-of-life period, there are various ways that you can treat your old electronic devices. However, dismissing it and transferring it to the landfill space is the worst choice to make up your mind. You can use several methods to restore or reuse your old electronic devices.

Please take it to the Tech firm: Many electronic manufacturers and retailers offer recycling programs. You can bring your old electronic parts to those firms, and your old devices will proceed to recycle.
Donate it: The best gesture to dispose of your old stuff is to donate it to a non-profit or charity organization. They would be happy to take that old stuff, including furniture, clothes, and especially electronic inventory, over from you.
Sell your old devices: If you have no intention of donating them to non-profit organizations, you can come up with the idea of selling them to other people. It might be old to you but new to others, plus you can earn a little amount of money from it.
Create artwork from your electronic junk: You can recycle your old electronic devices into creative artwork using different electronic parts like computers, mobile phones, or electronic components. You can generate furniture or portraits from electronic junk, which offers eco-friendly products for our life.

The mentioned data was extracted from the following websites: