Hello from NH Manufacturer

Hello! I am from Hypertherm, a manufacturer of metal cutting equipment (plasma, waterjet, accessories, software). Our goal is to ensure that by 2020, none of our equipment ends its life in a landfill, and is instead 100% recycled. A lofty goal given that we don’t have much control over our end users, especially 5-30 years after they buy our equipment! My research has shown that most of our end users send our dead equipment to a local scrap yard where ever they are in North America. I believe that this is a great way for our ferrous and non-ferrous components (which make up the vast majority, by weight, of our systems) to be recycled. However, this may not be the best place to ensure that plastic breakage and printed circuit boards are properly recovered. Some of our systems could have 10 pc boards of good value in them, along with hard drives, CPUs, RAM, processors, etc.

While this is my primary question right now, I am looking to join the forum to learn more about the scrap industry in general, and to reach more people than cold-phone calls!

Originally Posted by rtindall

Hello! I am from Hypertherm, a manufacturer of metal cutting equipment (plasma, waterjet, accessories, software). Our goal is to ensure that by 2020, none of our equipment ends its life in a landfill, and is instead 100% recycled. A lofty goal given that we don’t have much control over our end users, especially 5-30 years after they buy our equipment! My research has shown that most of our end users send our dead equipment to a local scrap yard where ever they are in North America. I believe that this is a great way for our ferrous and non-ferrous components (which make up the vast majority, by weight, of our systems) to be recycled. However, this may not be the best place to ensure that plastic breakage and printed circuit boards are properly recovered. Some of our systems could have 10 pc boards of good value in them, along with hard drives, CPUs, RAM, processors, etc.

While this is my primary question right now, I am looking to join the forum to learn more about the scrap industry in general, and to reach more people than cold-phone calls!

hi,if you are in my area 01952 drop it off,ed.

Hello from northern NH.

It is pretty simple to obtain the zero landfill policy. The hardest thing would be the smaller items.

Many ways of doing it and would love to talk with you sometime if you need help.

I am part of a recycling group in NH that is connected with most municipalities in the state and could be useful to you.

I can't help but feel that a little bit of hands on experience would be the best teacher.

1: Locate a few old Dell desktops or towers from the early to mid 90's and tear them down for recycling.

2: Pick up about 10 Dell towers that were manufactured between 2001 - 2004. Tear them down for recycling.

A: Note the evolution in design between the older & the newer.

B: Scrapping is production work. We're under time pressure to perform. See if you can get your tear down time to under ten minutes.

3: Pick up about ten Mac computers from that same 2001 - 2004 time period. Tear them down with the objective of 100% recycling. Get your teardown time to under ten minutes.

Compare and contrast the Dell PC with the Mac. Make note of what you like and don't like about each .... then take the lessons learned and incorporate them into your own product.