Recycle America Grows With Added Recycling Opportunities
The “Company Profile” is an Earth911.com series highlighting consumer goods and services making a difference through product stewardship and recycling. Products and services featured do not pay for placement and are not endorsed by Earth911.com.
When you see Waste Management logos on garbage trucks and dumpsters throughout the U.S. and Canada, you may not associate the company with recycling. The reality is that Waste Management’s (WM) Recycle America program diverted more than 7.6 million tons of recyclable material from landfills in 2007.
WM Recycle America handles everything from electronics. We talked with WM Recycle America’s Public Affairs Manager Richard Abramowitz to learn more.
Program Overview
WM Recycle America is a full-service recycling company, handling the needs of both consumers and businesses. It handles residential recycling collection through Waste Management, recycles industrial plastic and serves as an end-of-life recycler for e-waste.
Over 85 percent of the material (by weight) handled by WM Recycle America is some form of Podcast on iTunes to provide more detail on its services.
Addressing E-Waste
You may already be familiar with WM Recycle America’s partnerships with LG and Sony to provide recycling events throughout the nation for these products. WM Recycle America also set a goal of providing one collection site for every state by the end of 2008. So far, there are 160 such locations in the U.S. You can also use Earth911′s recycling locator to find an e-cycling drop off near you.
Electronics are different from other products collected because they must be taken apart for individual materials.
“Each item is broken down to its sub-components to materials that are marketable,” says Abramowitz. “A computer monitor is broken down into plastic housing, a circuit board, yoke and a glass tube, which is not broken but shipped whole.”
For those who don’t live near a WM Recycle America electronics collection location, there is a mail-in option for free recycling. WM Recycle America has four eCycling centers in Denver, Colo., Minneapolis, Minn., Oklahoma City, Okla. and Springfield, Mass.
Abramowitz says there hasn’t been much response to the mail-in option yet, but points out that several states will be implementing e-waste laws in 2009 and the mail-in option will provide an alternative for those without electronics recyclers in their area.
Recruiting e-Cyclers
Instead of opening brand new recycling facilities in different communities for e-waste, WM Recycle America will recruit existing e-waste collection locations to join its program.
“These locations must meet certain criteria for operations and health and safety in order to be part of the program,” says Abramowitz. “We have an extensive review process.”
In addition to material recovery facilities and the mail-in locations, WM Recycle America has 35 e-waste partner processors to prepare recycled materials for their next life in the manufacturing of new materials.
Impact of Consumers
While recycling rates are generally on the rise, Abramowitz says that there could be higher participation in all forms of recycling.
“Curbside programs need higher yields per household and higher participation rates, and drop-off programs also need more volume,” he adds.
Several WM Recycle America programs were created to increase awareness and education about recycling. This year alone, WM Recycle America launched:
- ThinkGreen, an educational site dedicated to waste and recycling issues
- ThinkGreen from Home, which provides mail-in kits for CFLs and batteries
Plans for the Future
Abramowitz says the primary focus of WM Recycle America will be increasing the amount of material handled and recycled. He says the plan is to handle 20 million tons each year in the near future, which would be a threefold increase.
WM Recycle America is also in talks with other electronics manufacturers to be the exclusive recycler of additional brands of electronics.
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The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.
roger
posted on December 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 am
My company is interested in setting up a electronics recycling center. I need information on how to get started, what equipment we will need, cost of setting up the operation, regulations on recycling electronics,etc. Could you please tell me where this information can be obtained?
Thank you
Roger
Bailey Londagin
posted on December 21st, 2008 at 9:28 pm
We’re a coffee lounge in Amarillo, Texas that’s part of a broad-based community organisation campaigning for a complete overhaul and expansion of Amarillo’s current “recycling programme.” While we congratulate BFI on its willingness to purchase a glass crusher (Amarillo currently doesn’t offer glass recycling), it would be nice to see refuse companies pushing cities they’re contracted with to adopt more comprehensive recycling efforts. In a city with around 120,000+ people, we still must haul our recyclables to BFI’s collection facility. And while we generate a substantial amount of rubbish, we’re small compared to other businesses in town. To our knowledge, we are the only for-profit business that continuously hauls its own recyclables off-site.
Deria Frazier
posted on April 12th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
My organization would like to motivate our community to recycle while at the same time raise funds and office supplies for our organization. How do you suggest we go about doing that?Also, we would like to find out about the regulations involved(receipt for write-offs, etc)?
Mehul
posted on August 9th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Hello,
We are new company of electronic waste recycling located in NC. We have a capacity of 10k Ton to recycle a year. we are looking to partner with other companies and government to procure more waste so that we can recycle it. We would like to explore opportunities to do business with companies or individuals who are looking to join us. We have several referral programs as well where we can create win win situation for everyone who joins us. Our goal is to make sure that not a single recyclable item ends up in the land fill.
Please reply us for more information or you can call me on 919-889-8998.
Thank you and looking forward for your prompt response.
Mehul
President and CEO
American Greenz Inc.
mehul@americangreenz.com
919-889-8998.
VivianSova
posted on August 25th, 2009 at 8:21 am
I have two auto’s sitting in my yard that could be crushed or used for the parts that are still good in them. Those parts are worth more than triple what the local recycler would offer me for them, so how can we, the citizen consumer out here, get a fair price for our products that we have used and now want to part with? Window glass, aluminum, tires, gas tanks etc we paid thousands of dollars for these things and I for one would like to have a place that would take the parts and pay me for them. Think of all the people who would do this also , kind of like the bottle return for soda pop and beer and wine bottles. Just think of the little business people that would create. We already have people who are out there collecting these bottles and cans from every nook and cranny because they know they can get cash for them at the local food stores. The auto industry is another one that could start to do more than they are with the cash for parts return system . It would be worth a try to see just what that would do to clean up the waste from the auto industry in a fashion that would not charge the consumer more but pay them to return the metals and parts for further use or crushing. All we have here is a local guy who will give you $200 per auto. My gas tank cost $600 alone when I had it replaced. Any suggestions to add?
Andrea van wien
posted on September 23rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Hello Trey,
I work in a Middle school of 700 students. I would love to start a powerful and innovative recycling campaign. The school is divided in 4 so there are 4 lunch time in the cafeteria. There are barrels where students put “everything” together. In each floor there are trash barrels too, but none of them is for recycling. I was planning to have flyers with pictures about recycling and where the trash goes, and get big recycling bins for each floor, Then a group of students could take out to the street the recycling barrel once a week. Could you please give some ideas of how to “engage” students , teachers, staff and custodians to this “wonderful” and necessary campaign?
I would appreciate it very much
Thanks
Andrea