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Computer Recycling
| Star Industries
provides a computer recycling service to its’ customers. The computers are picked up by Star employees and vehicles,
separated into two categories ("monitors" and "everything else") and delivered to a recycling
facility in Wisconsin. A shipping manifest is produced at the time of pickup, and a copy of the manifest, signed off as
a certificate of destruction and recycling, is provided to the customer when Star has completed the recycling
procedure.
The recycling facility is "tasked" with providing end-of-life termination or secure recycling of proprietary hardware and data. Materials are recycled to a commodity level -- that is, plastic, metal, and circuit board, as well as both leaded and unleaded glass. At this facility the equipment is "demanufactured" -- disassembled and separated into the basic categories (such as plastic, from the enclosures; metal, from the chassis; glass, from the monitors; and so on). The plastic is accumulated, condensed/baled, and eventually returned to the plastics material stream by shipment to plastic manufacturers. Metal items, such as the chassis, are similarly baled and sold to the (recycled) metal industry. Printed circuit boards are stripped of individual components ("depopulated") so that the bare boards can be sent to a printed circuit board recovery firm where the precious and/or heavy metals can be removed. Cathode ray tubes are opened in an air-ducted hood (to capture any escaping dust or gases) and then dispatched to a glass recovery vendor. Wire, including "clippings", is sent to a wire recovery plant where any remaining insulation is removed for recycling to a plastic vendor. The wire is also recycled, to a copper facility. Data are not released, in any media. A process path for memory (and any media including compact discs) is established to ensure the destruction of data to a point that recovery is not possible. If permitted to be sanitized and resold, hard drives are cleaned by DoD and DoE approved methodology. End-of-life drives are processed by removing the drive controller board, which is processed for metals recovery, and the balance of the drive is shredded and then melted for aluminum recovery. All end-of-life hardware is de-manufactured by hand or by mechanical means. No hardware or other materials generated from the process is landfilled. No prison or foreign labor sources are used to fulfill the de-manufacturing or commodity recovery practices. The processor adheres to the Recycling Code of Ethics which requires that electronic scrap or waste is not, in any form, exported. Also monitored is sale or reuse of components to include export restriction policies on hardware and to locations subject to such scrutiny as may be required by US or international law.All activities are completed by full-time employees, and each facility of the recycling vendor is limited access with security and environmental monitoring. No brokers are use in the completion of the computer recycling service. |