what are the big recyclers doing with the ewaste they buy?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flinthills

I'm not sure what to think anymore. I recently had a gentleman who lives in India email me asking what I'd pay for his ewaste!

---

I can tell you what I generally think....how much vs what I get now. Just saying that yes there are issues with it, but if the country that is taking this stuff will not do anything to clean it up or regulate it, then what am I supposed to do? If you offer me 2x what I get now, then I have to look at my operation profitability and do what is right for me. Again different people feel differently about it, but we live in a world economy. Everyone else imports and exports just about everything we buy...and I have to make a living...preferably the living I WANT, not what someone stateside is willing to give me.

The so called end users here in the US are dropping like fly's....There are quite a few primary smelters here in the US however behind the scenes while they have the capability to operate like a primary smelter they are not. They are operating in the secondary markets and exporting to less stringently regulated EU and asian primaries. The demand for physical metals in these countries is through the roof even though it isnt reflected in the current commodity markets. So you can have your stuff assayed all day long here in the US but if you could really see the writing on the wall you would be quite shocked. Your e-waste is getting exported by quite a few so-called end users. The rest of the middlemen are sorting and separating for anything of market value and its fire and forget on the scrap side. Theres a bit of a decoupling happening in the certification world and exporting has been given quite a bad name. I dont do it currently but I know exactly where my ewaste is going after it hits its "end user".

Makes sense. There was a report a few years back that stated what we perceived to be e-scrap recycling at the time was ust dumping our stuff back on the shores of Japan where the stuff was made in the first place so that it could be controlled by the cartells. Of course once that aired on CNN, I know of 4 "professional recylers" that closed their doors because that's all they were doing. People were donating their stuff to these companies in good faith and they were making big bucks off selling it back to Japan. Me personally, I don't see a problem with that but there's the right way and wrong way of doing it. I believe what the future will see is more scrappers getting into refining their stuff themselves and opening themselves to international markets such as ebay(even though their an auction house) or alibaba. I also believe that there will be a huge drop from people who get into scrapping due to either lack of interest or too much work.

Just my 2 cents on the subject,
Matt

i like scrapping
and as long as i can make a living out of it, i will keep on doing it

of course, if i was offered a really good job, then i would be crazy not to accept
until then, i will keep on scrapping

it allows me independence & i still have some money in my pocket- not much
but enough to keep me from stretching my hands out to anyone

and people respect that
that im not asking for money but for scrap
& im doing the hard work & turning the scrap into money