Recycles.Org  BETA Nonprofit Materials Exchange Network Computer & Office Electronics Recycling & Reuse

Date: Sunday, 7 August 2005

Title: Cashing in on school's garbage

Source: http://www.diamondbackonline.com

Remarks: by Kate Campbell

Terrapin Trader is where hard drives go when they die. It’s where ostrich barns find new homes, where Cal Ripken Jr. shops for Terp memorabilia and where the university’s Chesapeake biological research lab unloads a $75,000 ship. The official repository for the campus’ obsolete and unwanted furniture, equipment and miscellaneous thingamabobs has been in charge of selling and redistributing whatever crosses its loading dock since 1994. From June 2004 to June 2005, the university sold about $212,000 of equipment. The facility, in a warehouse on Paint Branch Parkway between the campus and the College Park Metro Station, has adapted to a new challenge: making sure the old computers streaming into the space don’t end up in a landfill. In May, the state caught up with the university when it passed House Bill 575, establishing the Statewide Computer Recycling Program. “It’s become a real concern for us and environmental safety on campus,” said Procurement Transportation Manager Doug Waterman, citing the toxic lead and mercury used in making electronic equipment. “Theoretically, it’s cradle to grave. Once we buy it, we’re responsible for it.” Central Shipping Supervisor Mike Painter recognized the danger posed to the environment by “e-scrap” — waste produced when electronics are broken down and discarded — in 1998 and contacted Subtractions, LLC, a Laurel-based company that dismantles computers, resells the usable parts and safely disposes of or recycles the waste. Terrapin Trader has since worked with two other companies to dispose of its computers. Each hauls the equipment away for free and returns a portion of the profits from resold parts to Terrapin Trader. The facility then gives the money to the university department that supplied the old computers. Painter said Pennsylvania company Keystone State Auctioneers, Inc. hauled away a particularly large load last week, consisting of 24 “skids.” Each skid contained about 30 central processing units, 22 monitors and 10 printers. The company returned $2,700 to Terrapin Trader. Painter’s initiative was voluntary. House Bill 575 will require companies to recycle their electronic waste. Another benefit of recycling the computers is the guarantee that the information they contain will never become public, Painter said. He said the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 mandates health information stored in old computers be destroyed before the equipment is disposed of or resold. Computer recycling companies erase the computers’ hard drives three times. Terrapin Trader belongs to the University Surplus Property Association, a national organization for other facilities of its kind. Painter said the group heard about the value of recycling computers from another university at a past annual conference. “They had a bunch of computers that they let go for real cheap,” he said. “[The customer] fired them up to see if they worked, and they had AIDS patients’ information on them. The results of that would have been disastrous.” George Shettle, computer specialist for Terrapin Trader, said the careful sifting process the facility applies to all computers received by the facility — computers in good condition are wiped of information, patched up and resold — takes a great deal of time, but the recycling process is worth it. “Our director came down and was complaining about the backlog,” he said. “I pointed to [a computer] and said, ‘That one has your salary on it.’”