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| The recycling compound at DESCO |
DESCO, one of the largest e-waste recycling company of South
Africa boasts of a huge facility where hundreds of workers are engaged in
recycling electronic waste. Behind their office premises, a vast cemented compound,
the size of two football fields, stand, surrounded by a tall electronic fence
and a huge iron gate.
Thousands and thousands of white bags are lined up on one
side of the compound filled with discarded circuit boards from various
electronic equipments like personal computers, laptops, workstations,
refrigerators etc. Another side of the compound is filled with hundreds of ATM
machines that have stopped working and have arrived at the facility to be
recycled or repaired.
There are approximately 120 people wearing different colored
coded safety vests working on the various segments of the compound.
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| Bags of circuit boards to be exported |
Says John van Coller, the corporate sales executive of the
company, pointing to the white bags: "All these bags are packed with circuit
boards of high grade value. They are to be exported to Brussels. The companies
there shall extract the gold, copper and aluminum from these boards and then
send them to various electronic equipment manufacturers."
Each week DESCO ships about 20 tons of circuit boards to
different countries abroad such as Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark etc. Most
European countries according to van Coller have s
ophisticated mechanism to
extract precious metals from the boards. Unfortunately, no recycler in South
Africa matches the technology available in these countries to extract the
metals. |
| Bags of SASSA cards from the Eastern Cape Government |
There are two main types of extraction process. The first is
shredding, where manual labour is involved in extracting the metals like gold,
copper, aluminum, platinum etc. It is cost effective and the main form of metal
extraction process used by recyclers in South Africa. The other is calcining or
pelting where machines are used to extract the metals.
However, both the processes are at an infant stage in the
country. Due to lack of awareness and general disregard to e-waste recycling, various
e-waste recyclers adopted these methods of extraction rather late as compared
to some African nations such as Ghana and Nigeria. It was only in 2011-2012
that DESCO along with E-WASA, Department of Environmental Affairs and other
e-waste recyclers organized intensive training camps in the country to train
recyclers in the different metal extraction processes.
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| The machine for calcining/pelting of circuit boards |
According to Malcolm Whitehouse, manager of the computer
refurbishing centre, exporting circuit boards to foreign countries is an
expensive method. The companies abroad buy the circuit boards from South
African recyclers by weight. Each bag costs about R 200. About 25-30 bags of
circuit boards get exported each week. The shipping and transportation costs
are all borne by the European companies that buy the goods. However, after
extraction the cost at which these companies sell the extracted metals is
almost five times, of what they initially invest.
DESCO
recently entered into an agreement with the Eastern
Cape provincial government to recycle discarded SASSA cards and other
government identity cards.
According to van Coller: "These cards should be considered
electronic waste because of the magnetic strip and the electronic chip that is
embedded in the cards. However, mostly these are recycled by plastic recyclers
and the strip and chip are both thrown away by them which end up in the
landfills."
DESCO plans to enter into similar agreements next year with
all the eight provincial governments to recycle SASSA cards and similar government
identity cards.
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| DESCO working 'shredding' from circuit boards |
Investing in e-waste recycling can yield rich returns.
According to Whitehouse, the gold yielded by one kilogram of circuit boards can
equal the gold extracted from one ton of earth. However, it takes almost 2000
circuit boards to make up the one kilogram.
Explains van Coller: ‘If this awareness is generated; of how
valuable e-waste is to the nation’s economy then the need to recycle them will
become a priority.’
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