| Recycling and environmental issues |
| The disposal of redundant IT equipment. |
Environmental responsibility is paramount in our increasingly populated and developed world; Society, Best Value practice and the impending European Union WEEE directive insist on both individuals and organisations acknowledging their environmental duties.
Since 1998 Seek-IT Ltd has been developing cost effective collection, assessment and de-manufacturing processes for waste electronic equipment. We depend upon low cost repair, testing and refurbishing techniques and endeavour to maintain the fact that over 90% of the items that we collect are used for either resale or reuse by donation to UK and African projects.
We believe that Best practise recycling is reuse. Achieving maximum reuse is a fundamental objective of Seek-IT Ltd. We have made it our business to develop an extensive knowledge of second use ITC equipment markets and we combine this with our flexible recovery process. Organisations that benefit from our ITC disposal service do so in the knowledge that their surplus equipment continues to be of use and does not enter the waste chain prematurely or unnecessarily. |
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| Demanufacture & manual segregation |
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| The small percentage that cannot be reconditioned or repaired is disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. All items, which are not suitable for reuse are demanufactured after being separated into 4 principal categories indicated in the pie chart. Demanufacturing is primarily a manual process in order to guarantee that segregated waste streams do not mix and that hazardous compounds are unable to contaminate other material. |
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Electronic waste is sorted into a further 7 categories
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Plastic processing
Brominated and non brominated plastics are separated and all metal content is removed to avoid contamination in later plastic reprocessing. Clean and sorted plastic has no residual value.
Monitor/CRT recovery
The manual removal and careful handling of cathode ray tubes is vital to ensure that glass tubes are not smashed. Tubes are reprocessed in Belgium to remove and isolate hazardous materials such as lead, phosphorous, cadmium, barium and mercury. As a result of high transport, handling and recycling costs, CRT disposal is costly.
Metals
Metal is currently sorted into ferrous and non-ferrous and holds a positive value of between £20 - £40 per tonne.
Cardboard & Expanded polyester
The disposing of residue packaging from new equipment has become standard practise during most large scale equipment roll outs despite not being integral to the core WEEE processing. In addition to rapidly removing all bulky items from the installation site, the Seek-IT solution is completely environmentally friendly and does not contribute to landfill.
Cardboard has a neutral value owing to the small quantities involved. Expanded polyester disposal is relatively expensive due to the high volume to weight ratio and limited treatment facilities in the UK.
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