On October 14, 2019, the National Recycle Week starts. The objective is clear: high-quality new products can be made with the help of recycling electrical and electronic waste (e-waste). Through its partners Blanken Controls and Coolrec, the RTA Foundation (Recycling Technological Equipment) shows how this aim is put into practice, while the legally imposed obligations regarding collection and recycling are becoming increasingly strict.
By: Dimitri Reijerman
Producers and importers of electrical and electronic equipment for business must comply with the legal obligations laid down in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations. The RTA Foundation helps her Attendees with this. In this way, the RTA Foundation ensures that, after an online registration in the MyRTA module, the electrical and electronic waste is collected and processed.
During National Recycling Week, the RTA Foundation looked closely at how the entire process from collection to processing works in practice. Blanken Controls, an importer/wholesaler of measuring equipment with service activities in the field of calibration, regularly supplies e-waste via the MyRTA system. Willem Dikker Hupkes, director of Blanken Controls and board member of the RTA Foundation, says: “Equipment that needs to be calibrated comes to us every day. Everything that is rejected must be recycled. Net we bring more kilos for disposal to the RTA Foundation than we put on the market.”
Recycling
After collecting such electrical and electronic waste, it is transported to Coolrec, part of Renewi. Using modern, environmentally friendly processing systems, the equipment is dismantled at the Coolrec branch in Dordrecht and the residual materials are separated into 'monostreams'. In addition to refrigerators, of which Coolrec processes hundreds every day, the recycler also processes office equipment, blood pressure monitors, laboratory equipment and scanners. The flow is almost endless.
An important monostream that Coolrec's plastic recycling company generates from its recycling process is the 100% recycled polystyrene granules, with or without customer specifications. Ron Cramer, responsible for marketing at Coolrec, says that this material and other raw materials make a wide number of sustainable products possible: “Think of 100% recycled consumer tokens for festivals, circular watches based on polystyrene, or rolls of filament for 3D printers. We are now also able to color the material in any color you wish.” The future dream to be realized is from refrigerator to refrigerator. But there are more areas of application, Cramer believes: “For example, we have made medals for the KNSB. These medals for the National Skating Championships were made from precious metals found in mobile phones. Of course, you have to recycle a lot of mobile phones for that.”
Sharp objectives
The RTA Foundation and its partners strive to recycle more materials from electrical and electronic waste every year as high-quality as possible. Renate Toxopeus, manager of the RTA Foundation, therefore states that participation in the National Recycling Week is almost a given: “In this week, all parties involved in e-waste collection and recycling in the Netherlands ask for extra attention to the importance of handing in electronic waste. . On to the collection rate of 65%!”
With the collection percentage of 65%, Toxopeus refers to the requirements imposed on the sector by the EU. But to achieve that percentage in 2019, more steps are needed than increasing the volume of e-waste that is collected and the RTA Foundation is busy working on this together with other partners in the chain, says Foundation RTA board member Dikker Hupkes: “As the RTA Foundation, we have not yet reached that target of 65 percent. This has to do with leakage currents, among other things. A good example is medical equipment. After a depreciation of 15 or 20 years, the question is: will this device be exported abroad or donated to an NGO. How do you monitor such flows? In fact, that process is also a form of reuse and you can count it. But it is clear: the RTA Foundation is an effective way to solve part of the challenge you face as an entrepreneur in a good and responsible way.”
Nederlands