Companies like the Electronic Products Recycling Association and Canada Fibers are involved in “urban mining” – harvesting materials from used electronics or paper and plastics and recycling them back into the manufacturing stream.
Canada's recycling industry handles a veritable smorgasbord of waste – everything from plastic pop bottles and newsprint to cell phones and old computer printers.
Regardless of the diversity of junk recyclers collect, they share one common goal: keep it out of the landfill.
To reduce that flow to the garbage dump, recyclers as diverse as the Electronic Products Recycling Association (EPRA) and Canada Fibers are increasingly turning to "urban mining," the harvesting of metals and other materials that are steered away from landfills and returned back to the "remanufacturing stream."
"Since the inception of the program in 2011, we have diverted over 96 million devices that previously would have gone to the landfill," says Cliff Hacking, EPRA's president and CEO. "That feels like success."
In the Association's case, urban mining starts with getting more people to recycle their old electronic gadgets and other devices that contain precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, and iridium among others, he says. It serves to divert products and substances harmful to the environment from the landfill, including lead and mercury.
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| “Since the inception of the program in 2011, we have diverted over 96 million devices that previously would have gone to the landfill. That feels like success.” |
| Cliff Hacking is president and CEO of the Electronic Products Recycling Association (Supplied) |
Of particular concern are cathode ray tubes, the most bulky and heavy component of old-style TVs and computer display terminals, where lead was used to fortify the glass fronts. That equipment is now streamed to special verified processors such as Teck Corp., which operates smelters, to extract the lead, says Mr. Hacking.
Urban mining also presents other benefits, such as dramatically reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the process. "It is 10 times more efficient to harvest materials from your old computer or your old printer than it is to have to go and dig the metals fresh from the ground."
The Association, which represents electronics manufacturers and retailers, has been working to create a national end-of-life electronics program, relying in part on environmental handling fees levied at point-of-sale to pay the costs. In four short years, it has developed e-waste programs in eight provinces, including 2,100 consumer collection sites. It estimates that 100,000 metric tonnes annually are kept out of landfills, diverting over 15 million devices.
Urban mining is equally important to Canada Fibers, which started in 1990 as a Toronto-based broker of recycled papers and expanded into processing the province's blue box materials collection system, which includes plastics. It has recently expanded into manufacturing products and materials for home and industry through an affiliate, Urban Resource Group Inc., says Mark Badger, that company's senior executive.
"It's a unique move," says Mr. Badger. "Typically in the waste business, folks aren't engaged in downstream industrial and consumer products. We like to think by doing this, we keep recovered materials at home in Canada and put them to another productive life here and keep jobs in Canada."
In one program, pallets used to transport products to garden centres are ground up into garden mulch, which the retailer sells back to consumers, in what is called a "closed loop" strategy, he says. In another, a major form of waste – beverage bottles – is cleaned and ground up to yield polyethylene terephthalate flakes that are used in remanufacturing processes. That has also created about 35 jobs at Urban Polymers, an affiliate created last spring.
Europeans lead the world in diverting wastes from landfills, says Mr. Badger, singling out Belgium for sending a mere five per cent of all raw plastics waste to garbage dumps, while in Canada, 80 per cent of that waste still ends up in landfills.
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| Companies like the Electronic Products Recycling Association and Canada Fibers are involved in “urban mining” – harvesting materials from used electronics or paper and plastics and recycling them back into the manufacturing stream. (SUPPLIED) |
"In Europe, they have figured it out," he says. "The amount of mechanical plastic recycling in Europe is three to four times greater than what is mechanically processed in Canada."
"When you send something to a landfill, you don't create a lot of employment," he said. "When you transform something and give it a new life, you create a lot of employment."
Mr. Badger says he strongly advocates that Canadian legislators look to Europe to see what has worked there. "The results speak for themselves."
This content was produced by Randall Anthony Communications, in partnership with The Globe and Mail's advertising department. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.