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Feature Article April 29

Feature Article June 30/04

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E-Waste recycling moving forward

by Jeff Green

Its hurry up and hurry up time for the Land OLakes Communications Network (LOLCN) as the opportunity to set up a pilot project for an electronic waste recycling centre has come about.

Weve had news on three fronts recently, and this has given us what we need to move forward, Jim MacPherson told the News this week. The first bit of news came from the Township of Central Frontenac, who have provided a solution to the space problem faced by the centre.

The Oso garage, which will be no longer needed by Central Frontenac as operations are consolidated to two sites from the current four, will be rented to the Communications Network. Brent Tullis, who has been involved in site development on the project, said that doors will be blocked off on all but two of the bays at the garage, and an 18 by 24 foot room will be created to augment the office space on the south end of the building for use by students from Sharbot Lake High School in the co-op program administered by Mark Elliott, and for administrative offices.

The rest of the space will be used for a recycling centre, will be set up on what Jim MacPherson describes as a triage model. Material will come into the centre, and will be evaluated by technicians, who will determine which pieces can be diverted to the refurbishing centre; which can be put aside for sale; and which will be put to recycling.

The e-waste centre will be the logical extension of the work done by the LOLCN for the Computers for Schools program, except now they will be able to accept all computers from a wealth of sources, and will then determine which can be used by schools and non-profit corporations, and which need to be safely recycled.

Recently, Mark Elliott and his crew have built a thin client lab to demonstrate how it is possible to re-use computers that formerly were seen as too old to be returned to active use. By attaching low end Pentium 1 machined to a server, the Pentiums can be run completely off the software on the server and dont need to store any software or content. In fact they dont need hard drives at all. By using open source or unlicensed software that is in the public domain, a school or a non-profit corporation can set up a network of machines at minimal cost, and some machines that were destined for the junk heap can be re-used.

The other pieces of news for the LOLCN came when they received funding through the Community Futures Development Corporation that will enable them to put together a plan for Knowledge Based Economy Funding which they will need to carry out the next phase of the project, and they have just received funding for 15 weeks through Human Resources and Skills development to get the centre up and running by October 1.

The pilot project will have the goal of determining whether an e-waste centre can become a self-financing enterprise, and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment is expected to come forward with new legislation in the fall requiring that computer and computer parts producers put an extra cost on all new equipment that will be diverted towards paying for disposal of electronic waste. A similar scheme has been introduced in Alberta.

If this legislation comes through as expected, the E-Waste recycling centre could become a model for rural e-waste recycling throughout the province.

To be successful Jim MacPherson says, we will also have to be able to ensure that when material leaves our hands, whether it is monitors going to Noranda for safe disposal, or mother boards that are to be stripped of valuable metals and then recycled, they are all properly handled by whoever gets them.

In the past, computer parts have ended up being shipped to third world countries for disposal, where they have often ended up in situations where people were exposed to toxins such as lead from computer monitors.

With the participation of the Government of Canada