E-Waste

this program is made possible by support from Burrtec waste industries incorporated Ruta will take care of it have you and your family bought a new TV recently well if you have what do you do with your old one tune in to this episode of curiosity quest to find out what to do welcome to curiosity quest goes green I'm your host Joel green and this is a show that explores wrong curiosities on the environment well today we got a letter from Nicky in Southern California and Nicky wrote dear Joel dumping obsolete electronics seems to be one of the major problems in our environment how do they recycle or reuse obsolete electronics it is so interesting that I want to have my own recycling company when I grow up Thank You Nicky thank you for being so ambitious and good luck on your company today we are out here at ehre cycling in Southern California we're gonna learn how they take old electronics and recycle them so let's get started on today's curiosity quest okay so what you see what where but gira cycling of California that's what I need to bring this in hey kids can we fix it I don't fix it all right so I'm here with Dennis from be recycling now Dennis tell us what do you how does it work here well that's a good question it works here we take in electronic equipment starting with the CRTs which is your monitors and your TV units and we just dismantle them down to the bare units there's lead in the glass in the monitors and then your TV screens that are harmful to the environment and so the Department of Toxic has banned this material from going into the landfills and polluting our environment our soil and contamination and so the integrated waste management board came up with and the state legislature came up with a plan to allow residents consumers businesses to dispose of this material in a safe free manner and bring it to people like us who are approved recyclers and take dismantle this in a safe manner so that it doesn't harm our environment so we're not allowed in California it is against the law to put a TV or a monitor or any electronic item in a landfill absolutely are you tracking or in your in your trash can no no no it you need to bring it to an approved collector recycler so now once a person finds an approved place to to drop off right now I see these big you know big green bins right picked up in these and then they're brought to you right right there there are a number of ways to do this we have household hazardous round ups where counties and cities hold this for their residents we provide these these bins and people come by during that day that's designated and they drop off their electronic material anything with a battery or a plug or a circuit board and monitors and they put them in these bands and at the end of the day we bring these bands here and well well show you what we do with them what is a commodity a type of recycling the type of way to recycle well I've heard lots of stories but what I've heard is it's time it's a giant car that runs over trash and then burns it a group of people stuff that you recycle something you don't have a lot of we break this down into a commodity every piece of equipment we recycle about 98% of this product goes into some gets broken down into a commodity which then is put into another product and recycled for those that don't know at home what is it come on the commodity is you'll see that the plastic or or or or the metal or circuit boards is all made into something else it's separated made into something else more of a raw material put back in and then is made back into another product so that's what the commodity is it's it's what's left out of our product that we can then turn back into another product back in fact that here you go here's some CQ fun facts on a waste did you know that Americans are buying more computers than any other nation in the world currently over fifty percent of US households own a computer did you know that about every three years we buy a new computer when was the last time your family bought a new computer a monitor a complete monitor right here and then a completely pulled apart monitor right here correct well this is how this monitor comes into the facility here intact and we start to take the components apart we cut the wire as you can see then we later will do more to that wire to get it down and break it all down this is the shell or the casing here that comes out and inside we have you know a grade that that that covers that monitor this is the yoke that is on the back of the monitor and that's removed and you know we have a circuit board in there and so you know that all comes apart and even gets broken down to a greater degree as they go through the line so this monitor is is it completely recyclable or what 99% of everything you see is recycled Wow does nothing here goes to the landfill I see Dennis what happens the trucks unload the trucks back up and they start to loading and then one well the truck backs up and gets away there and the material gets logged in once that's completed it's then transferred right behind here to a worker we have our our racks which you see here which are built exclusively for us so we build them ourselves and they're a safety issue you can take out the rack right here it opens up and we're able to people are able to stack them in there we put that back there forklift capable and put on the truck I brought weight in and then they're brought right behind here so our guys can open them up and then they pull them right out of here and they put them on the table and they go to work what is CRT current recycle tables a recycling organization certified in case there's a earthquake current recycling transportation everybody knows that cathode ray tube cathode ray - I'm sorry what cowboyed ray to tap wood ray - yeah I learned that - you'll see what that is this is your this is the same thing as in your TV monitor so no different than a computer monitor that is a computer model I'm sorry TV military's not very much the thing so he's taking various pieces they're doing the plastic over there it looks like metal right here correct border keyboards you'll have the wires right here and then he'll take that glass and they'll put it back into a smaller Bend here which will be transferred over to an operation which will then separate this the the main reason for keeping these out of the landfill is because of the LED that's the lad is inside there's about three to six percent of left inside this this box so you're gonna let me know pull in these part I'm gonna let you pull one of these apart yeah he's gonna teach you how to do this okay four to five minutes you sides well probably for you maybe a little longer oh he's been doing it for a while shorter 30 seconds yeah we'd rather have you go yeah there's a second and that's why we have laws regulating that people like me don't like you that's exactly right how did they take computers apart they use tools right they take the plugs out of there and then they and then I picked the computer screen up and then they picked the bottom thing up and they pick the cores out and then they get the cores and put it somewhere safe a giant giant anvil and they'll drop it on it boom just I don't know I guess shutting down all the software and everything is that just like taking it apart and taking apart all the pieces with hammers in the storage ivories one screw at a time just take a screwdriver and pull it apart I guess you don't use a hammer that's just me first thing we do here you're gonna cut this wire around cut the wire out of it got it right there all right goes right into our barrel here in the Burrow put it right there I've gotta cut this - yeah cut that cord all right very good I was doing so good all right and what is universal waste waste in the world universal waste it's pretty self-explanatory where everybody has common ways that guess that's every day that goes into the series well lots of things personally I think it's my cousin's brain Dennis what is universal waste well Universal waste is anything with a battery plug or a circuit board in it doesn't it's not a CRT which is different as you know a separate electronic waste which is a definition used for term for reimbursement from the state of California this is universal waste this is banned from the landfill as well anything with a plug circuit board or battery so like an old tape tape that you know it's got stuff in there it's got rotors it's got plug it's got so you know printers back things you know you have all kinds of material and the more that we're keeping out of the landfill the better off we are here in California yeah there's a circuit a circuit board huh this is this is this is one of your teeth right inside your CPU and the CPU this comes right out of your CPU you use it you put a tape in it this is what it looks like this is gonna be taken apart to a greater degree you can see that it has metal plastic everything you want to still break down so this will be broken down even further you're kind of with with some of these here you're basically the beginning of the link they are the beginning chain pulling a little part starting about making them back into raw material breaking it down and then sending at some place where they can refine it put it back into a product okay well I see you over here that you get some of your hard drives for computers now what are you doing with these hard rock well these are drive our take foot in it into the machine that we had built and we punch a hole in it so they're unusable and the reason is that for the privacy sector privacy protection we have we can have deep growl stand clean but even with that there's the possibility that that information at times is improving to be able to get off of it and since none of our material we don't resell any whole units so hard drives memories supply is not resold no parts from any kind of computer is resold there as a whole unit so we destroy it but we make sure we destroy the hard drive Joe let me show you this this is what goes on the back of a CRT a TV and this is what produces the light into the TV it produces a picture I'm going to show you how we break this down this little and take all the couple of different components out of here so we can make them reusable brother material it comes out of here after it's crushed and they go through it they start to take it apart you can see that they're clipping the copper yeah they're taking the plastic part no I just have to crush it because it's hard to pull this apart correct yeah but imagine to be a little bit yeah it'd be almost impossible to focus we get it down to a smaller commodity and a workable commodity that's here you have four guys over here doing this is this look like you need more I mean the probably need well no yeah but they they do a pretty good job they go off watcher they get a little quicker and we sort of get it down there sure and it will be here to my left over here to your left as a result of what comes out of here as far as copper go copper is it okay to handle this and that's okay okay all this copper wow that is a lot it's in different colors at different grades it comes in different grades of copper looks like hair Melissa like Melissa all right so I'm at the separation table of Jeremiah's and Jeremiah how are we going to separate these alright so when all the water gets dumped on the table gets separated from the copper aluminum the box popper comes from the shredder okay way we find out it's copper we cut it open we can see it's copper see there's a lot all the color little whiners it's really easy it's all them every single coded wire is aluminum that'll go blue Rick it doesn't matter how the black wires or no there's a lot of the copper wires but mostly bad guys this is this isn't it's electrical tape it's tape these are around the TV tubes okay go around yeah I remember cut so that gets crosses here and then it gets dumped and machine so that's what you're gonna do you only want to do a little at a time because you want to jam the Machine up disease oh yeah all that sleigh Shin is coming down so this is all this stuff that was wrapped around the copper X call the flop which is the material inside the wire gets sucked up through this then that's trash this gets recycled and so does the cop it's it's amazing because there's a bunch of gun on that table and what's going what's the trash you said it'll usually we're gonna get about 70 percent copper 29 percent insulation insulation 1% fluff about 1% is right then it could be the other way the next day it all depends on how thick the rubber is and how small the copper wire is inside okay what can the wires in the computer be used for like toys and dolls talk if there were like some sort of electrical thing that needed what the third electrical product that needed wires they could reuse wires from old computers and reuse them in new products or software whatever you want to call it honey this is the finished product this is the finished product finished product 99 percent copper Wow so there's still a little bit of insulation and it's nothing that we knew but it's a little bit could have anything for nothing we can do better yeah Wow this machine's brand-new they only made 16 of them so far we have one of them Wow in the world you know it's amazing it's heavy I've never I've never held like pure copper this right here it weighs about weighs 2,600 pounds 2,600 pounds was it just the insulation is a form of plastic basically is it yeah yes it's all the plastic all the stuff that the copper is wrapped around around the copter but saying it's inside the wire club that's in that bucket the bucket there's nothing I can pick this up but yeah ask you see these really big it up I can't leave these weigh about full 1,100 pounds Wow that's a big difference between the weights yeah we can only put about another Wow okay so this gets recycled off for this so the copper will go to somewhere to use this copper and remake the wires that end up back in the TV right correct any kiddie copper and copper they rate their you do it's all it's all recycled while the puppet recycle we're pulling out the copper and it's going to be reused reuse it gets recycled and they sold your soul Wow and this F gets recycled and this again was wrapped around macabre but this is just a very small Kimani or very small part of the big thread very small are the ones even the things we recycle oh yeah Wow awesome let's go check out another me fun fact one fun fact not two years ago only 11% of computers were getting recycled and what about cell phones we throw away about a hundred and thirty million of them a year that's 65,000 tons of waste and did you know that CRTs contain an average of 6 pounds of lead each that's why we keep them out of the landfill by subdennis we brought all the CRTs correct which are again the cathode ray tube all right the big tubes at the team Isaac computers have correct over here and what are we gonna do with all these again well we're gonna take this all apart because inside this cathode ray tube the CRT there is lab and it is the lead that we're gonna send off to a manufacturer who's gonna remove that lead and back in the glass to CRT glass and make new monitors right so how do we do that well let's start we take we first take off what we call the guttin and which is oh I'm sorry which is this part we remove this gun and it it goes into the bend there and then we take the CRT and we put it up here and we cut the band and the band is right here you can see the band and the metal piece here that's holding it together so all the ones in the Tri correct you cut those off cut those off recyclable and as we run them up you can see that inside here we have a sort of a a plastic kind of covering and we'll that'll be removed up here but as we move up we're going to separate that glass going up to a conveyor belt which separates the glass into two sections what's called the panel which has the bulk of the LED in it and the funnel right here so all of the LED are in these deep the glass I'm looking at right here the LED is within the sconces and this is what we do not want to go to a laptop alright and so we're able to use reuse this by sending it to a manufacturer who takes that let out of that glass okay and then the plastic piece that was in the back see right here this is recyclable as well everything that we've taken apart is recyclable it all becomes plastic and metal it's just it's so I opening I mean it everything I've seen here is just so eye-opening because I just gave it no thought back long long long long long time ago when I threw a TV away long time ago and many people did and we did for a long time but now that you know technology is caught up and we realize what we had been doing by potentially damaging our environment we're now able to do something that's productive and safe okay now you needed one yeah I think you've done enough damage for one day yeah the next ventures we go around the corner here and you're gone Thanks fun fact fun fact did you know that the average PC not including the monitor is typically 40% steel thirty to forty percent plastic ten percent aluminum and ten percent other metals like copper gold silver and you get the picture that's a Dennis we've talked about the copper obviously becoming useful again the glass being deal ed how do you call that D lettuce eyes sea lettuce eyes that's sorta that's a new word I like that yeah I coined that buzzer yeah I like that we're gonna have to give that to you the glass becoming a useful glass again right what about all this plastic you know that make up the bodies of the computers in well we have two types of different plastic we have the white plastic and and the black plastic obviously and it goes again it goes back to being recycled uh you know we sent it back to someone who palletized the pelletize is it makes them back into pellets and turns it into a product again it's it's again the same story you're getting the drift here we're not reciting we're recycling and we're putting this back in to another product no I'm kidding this is the back of the TV not the front of the TV right Dennis right these are the backs of the TVs and sort of the cases our old large TVs one sort of historically you see these are the kinds that sometimes you you get you really want to put in a museum but this is the wood and it's separated here yeah and you're gonna follow this wood because this wood goes into a composting facility which then gets processed and is used for land ground cover and other types of materials I mean I appreciate the time Dennis because you know we saw the TVs the computers everything being pulled apart and the copper go in this way and the plastic going this way would go in this way well I think you would appreciate it considering that you're you're in front of the camera then you're in the TV and now you see what happened to it what happens to that one at the end of end of life and we that's what we are called we are called an end-of-life facility so I did some investigating and not only is my city douwe recycling so does my local hauler so I thought I'd bring some things drop them off I want to thank everyone at Erie cycling and I especially want to thank you Nikki for sending us on today's curiosity quests now if you want to send me on a green quest all you have to do is go to KBC org click on the curiosity quest link and simply tell me what you're curious about and you could be the one that sends us on our next great adventure now remember it is our responsibility to take care of this planet so I'm curious have you gone green I'm Joel Green and I'll see you next time but what come on keyboard doesn't work it's really not gonna work now you

Channel: Chula Vista Clean & Green

Views: 24,481

Rating: 4.5628414 out of 5

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Id: EO7oL4oaMm4

Length: 25min 43sec (1543 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 13 2015