Green machines

Businesses soon may be disposing of

computer monitors under Universal Waste

Rules, a waste category established by the

Environmental Protection Agency to

handle ubiquitous hazardous waste.

The EPA's goal is to make it easier and

less costly for businesses to dispose of

widely used products that contain

hazardous materials. If placed in that

category, CRTs would still be handled and

disposed of as hazardous waste, but the

paperwork associated with them would be

cut. That can significantly reduce the cost

of disposal.

In May, the EPA sent out a request for

comment on whether monitors - specifically

the cathode ray tubes, or CRTs,

inside the monitors - should be handled in

the same way as batteries, recalled pesticides,

mercury-containing thermostats and

fluorescent lamps. A final decision will

take time, maybe even years, said David

Friedman, recycling coordinator, solid

waste branch of Nevada's Bureau of Waste

Management in Carson City. "The

government is just feeling its way around

the issue." He said. "But the road is being

built right now."

If that happens, the rules for disposing

of CRTs would become less stringent, and

businesses would be categorized as either

small-quantity generators or large-quantity

generators, depending on how much

CRT waste they create. Under the criteria

for fluorescent lamps, for example, a smallquantity

handler of universal waste is

defined as any business that accumulates

less than 11,000 pounds of waste at any

time, while a large quantity handler is

defined as one that amasses more than

11,000 pounds.

Many businesses may not even be

aware that CRTs, as well as other electronic

equipment, are considered hazardous

waste. "It's just recently that someone

finally realized CRTs had lead so they

were hazardous waste," said Friedman.

The Lockwood Regional Landfill in

Sparks, which serves Washoe County,

stopped taking CRTs from businesses

about 10 months ago, according to Mark

Franchi, landfill transfer station manager,

and the landfill has plans soon to stop

taking any part of the computer from

businesses, he said.

CRTs contain lead and cadmium, both

on the EPA's list of hazardous materials

under the agency's Resource Conservation

and Recovery Act, or RCRA, which

Nevada follows. The plastic casing also

may be hazardous, said Friedman, because

most are made heat resistant with bromiated

flame retardant, another hazardous

chemical. And other parts of a computer

may contain hazardous wastes, too. The

liquid crystal display used in flat panel

screens and laptops, for example,may contain

mercury, said Friedman. Circuit board

solder is also a problem in sufficiently

great quantities.

RCRA specifies chemicals and minerals,

not products, which are hazardous.

(The exception is the universal waste category

in which the EPA specifies products

that it considers to be pervasive.) Under

RCRA, it is up to the manufacturer to

determine whether a product contains

hazardous waste and then if it passes what

the EPA calls the toxicity characteristic

leaching procedure, or TCLP, to determine

whether the product would seep

dangerous amounts of hazardous wastes if

it were placed in a landfill.

The manufacturer determines whether

a product is classified as hazardous waste,

but it's the responsibility of the end-user

to dispose of such products properly and

legally. The Business Environmental

Program, an EPA-funded outfit located at

the University of Nevada, Reno, can help

businesses figure that out. The service is

free and confidential, and businesses of

any size can take advantage of it.

The group's goal is to promote hazardous

waste reduction, said Peter

Johnson, hazardous waste management

specialist at BEP. The program helped

reduce business-generated hazardous

waste in Nevada by a couple hundred

thousand pounds last year, said Johnson.

The first thing BEP does for a business is to

determine whether its old CRTs are still

usable. If so, BEP suggests several ways the

business can resell the monitors, including

posting them on the NevadaMax.org web

site, a business-to-business materials

exchange run by BEP where businesses can

sell or buy equipment.

If the monitors cannot be reused, BEP

helps businesses recycle them. If a business

is large, said Johnson, BEP encourages it to

work with the computer manufacturers to

take back the monitors. Most PC makers

have so-called take-back programs for

leased computers and Johnson thinks large

end-users have enough leverage to force

makers to accept purchased PCs, too.

"My goal is to make corporate entities,

like the Dells and Gateways, to be more

accountable," said Aaron Zimmerman,

owner of Abacus Revival, a Reno-based recycler

of computer equipment. His dream is to

collect computers and other electronic equipment

then work with the manufacturers to

create large-scale take-back programs. That's

proving a rough row to hoe, he said, so in the

meantime Abacus recycles on its own.

Abacus is one of dozens of computer

recyclers that businesses, both large and

small, can use to dispose of used equipment.

Abacus, for example, recycles more than a

million pounds a year. The company takes

apart CRTs, said Zimmerman, and removes

any precious metals. Then it sends the glass

to a company in Pennsylvania, where it is

ground, melted and recycled. The circuit

boards, plastic and steel are processed similarly.

Abacus also handles copy machines,

printers, and computer CPUs, all of which

contain one or more hazardous waste materials.

Whatever category CRTs and other ewaste

falls into, recycling it is what matters,

said Johnson and others. According to the

EPA, as many as 315 million obsolete computers

could potentially be disposed of in

landfills by the 2004. That would introduce

4 billion pounds of plastic, 1 billion pounds

of lead, 2 million pounds of cadmium and

400,000 pounds of mercury into the waste

stream, the EPA said.