Recycling PC’s

According to 8/13 Wall Street Journal (“Noranda Gleans Precious Metals From Old PCs and Electronics:Mining Company Finds It Does Pay To Recycle Consumer Electronics”)

There’s gold in them thar PCs.

And copper, silver, platinum and palladium, metals that areincreasingly being recycled from discarded computer and electronic gear andsold in metals markets around the world.

To the big Canadian mining company Noranda Inc., the mounting global heap of used consumer electronics is as valuable a source of metal as any of its operating mines or any deposits its geologists might discover. Electronics, in fact, produce “a much higher dollar value per ton than mined ore” from the earth, says Bob Sippel, senior vice president of recycling for Noranda.

Just about any electronic gear can be recycled. Computers, printers,telephones, pagers, stereos and network routers are among the products dropped in Noranda’s four recycling facilities in the U.S.

Mining companies and technology companies may be unlikely bedfellows,but Noranda and Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., are building on a relationship established five years ago, when the companies created na electronics recycling facility in Roseville, Calif. This month they launched another facility, in Nashville, Tenn. H-P pays Noranda to process unsold equipment as well as gear collected from consumers and businesses under a recently launched “take-back” program. Under the current program, consumers pay $13 to $30 to have their old electronics picked up, but “eventually it’ll be just part of the purchase price” of the new equipment, predicts

Renee St. Denis, H-P’s product-recycling manager