Take the computer chips from a truckload of seat belt alarms, run them through a shredder, and then roast them to 1,300deg C. What do you get? Aside from the worthless stuff, 80 oz. of pure platinum. With platinum selling for US$500 per oz., that tallies up to US$40,000 in revenue. Not bad for old car parts that would have been sent to the dump 10 years ago. Just ask Noranda. Introduced 15 years ago to supplement copper concentrate feed at Noranda’s Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., scrap metal recycling has developed into a multi-million dollar sideline for Canada’s mining giant. By 1989, scrap and other secondary materials accounted for more than 10% of Horne smelter feed and as the pressure to reduce, re-use and recycle gathers steam, observers are forecasting continued growth — if, that is, ill-considered environmental legislation doesn’t get in the way.
At Noranda, they are called new-wave prospectors — the more than 300 scrap prospectors who seek out scrap suppliers around the globe and harvest their bounty. Their interest extends not only to the millions of pounds of defective parts discarded by industry daily, but to used equipment components headed for the dump. Just about anything, from worn-out computer circuit boards to silver-topped perfume bottles, is considered potentially valuable. Electronic scrap, like the computer chips that trigger noisy warnings when seat belts are left unfastened, is particularly lucrative, because of a precious metals content that includes gold, silver and platinum group metals. Depending on the original purpose, electronic scrap can grade up to a couple of hundred ounces of precious metals per ton, although the bulk of Noranda’s supply grades in the 5-to-20-oz. range. By contrast, ore from Placer Dome’s Campbell mine, Canada’s highest-grade gold operation, averages 0.66 oz. per ton.
As a first step in the precious metals recycling process, truckloads of old and defective parts are shredded into one-inch-diameter pieces. After precious metals analysis, the shredded material is run together with the plant’s usual feed of copper concentrates through the Horne reactors where, at temperatures of about 1,300degC, a controlled combustion of the non-metallurgical components occurs.
Harder Than it Sounds
It all sounds simple but, in fact, determining the precious metal content of various scrap types is difficult and time-consuming. “The real expertise in the business is the sampling,” said Bob Sippel, director of unrefined precious metals for Noranda Minerals. It is also the most expensive step in the operation, accounting for more than 50% of the operating costs. Up to 10%, or 600 lbs. of a typical 3-ton shipment, will be sampled to ensure grade accuracy. A precise precious metals count is essential, though, because the price Noranda pays its customers is based on the sample analysis and current metals prices.
Even the same type of scrap varies widely when it comes to grade. For example, because the U.S. government can ill-afford faulty weaponry, the multi-million dollar computer chips in U.S. defense missiles are thickly lined with protective gold. On the other hand, if a chip installed in a seat belt buckle fails, the consequences are not quite so dire. So the platinum coating on these chips is relatively thin.
Obviously, monetary gain is the primary motivation for scrap suppliers, but there are two less apparent reasons why Noranda recycles discards for its customers. First, there is a real chance that if the parts are not destroyed, they will be sold on the black market, eventually turning up in somebody else’s equipment. It happened to a Los Angeles aerospace company, when the defective semi-conductors they sold as scrap were re-sold to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The faults were not discovered until pre-flight testing. Second, because of the growing costs and environmental implications of scrap disposal, more companies are opting for the recycling alternative. Some of Noranda’s customers are so concerned about the fate of their products, that they routinely send a representative to the Horne smelter to ensure their products are, in fact, destroyed.
Take, for example, Kodak, one of Noranda’s major customers. When Kodak’s instant cameras were found to violate a Polaroid patent, Kodak recalled more than 16 million of its Instamatics held by dealers and customers across North America.
Recyclable Cameras
Kodak was then faced with the formidable task of disposing of thousands of tons of cameras. Enter Noranda. At undisclosed terms, Noranda processed Kodak’s supply and recycled the silver, copper and other metals for a profit.
As recently as the 1970’s, Silicon Valley, Calif., the high-tech heartland of the U.S., threw out most of its defective parts. But as chip companies began to comprehend the profit potential for Valley scrap, they turned to the likes of San Jose, N.M.-based Micro Metallics, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Noranda. Since the late seventies, Micro Metallics has been collecting Silicon Valley scrap from high-tech companies and charging a per-pound fee to process the Valley’s mistakes. At Micro Metallics, as at Noranda’s other sampling plants, workers operate under strict environmental controls. Because some of the material emits lead dust, devices have been installed to control emissions and workers must wear protective masks.
Noranda owned a similar plant in Taiwan, but that country has recently threatened to ban imports of non-ferrous scrap after studies showed massive lead poisoning in scrap recycling workers and environmental contamination by Acme, the island’s second-largest recycler of metal. Although Noranda already had concerns about the viability of the Taiwan plant, the banning threats were the final blow. Noranda closed up shop.
Ironically, scrap metal recycling, which is considered an environmental breakthrough in many ways, is threatened by environmental protection agencies not only abroad, but in Canada as well. Recently, the Canadian government proposed regulations to control the import and export of hazardous waste, which, if implemented in its present form, could wipe out the metals recycling industry altogether. “It would make it very difficult for companies to move secondary materials,” said Gary Nash, spokesman for the Mining Association of Canada. “Recyclables should have never been included on the list.” Under the new legislation, an exporter of hazardous waste must notify and obtain approval from the importing country before shipping its waste. The hazardous waste would then be traced, to ensure environmentally-sound disposal. Penalties would include jail sentences of up to three years and fines of up to C$1 million.
To determine whether material is hazardous, it is subjected to the acidic conditions commonly found in landfill sites. If a pre-determined amount of lead leaches out of the scrap under these conditions, the scrap is considered hazardous. Electronic scrap is included in this hazardous waste category because it is held together by a tin-lead solder. But the point Sippel and others in the mining industry make is that the trans-border scrap is not headed for the dump, but, on the contrary, will be destroyed during the recycling process. “They (the regulators) are not distinguishing between waste for disposal and waste for recycling,” said Sippel. “Why should the computer off your desk be treated in the same way as a truckload of pcbs (polychlorinated biphenyls)?” His prescription: “We need legislation that will encourage recycling, not kill it.”
If the legislation is implemented, expensive delays created by complying with onerous information requirements would constrain Noranda and other Canadian metal recyclers, such as Falconbridge and Inco, who are competing with foreign recyclers. “We may be forced to reduce our business significantly,” said Pat Kent, a spokeswoman for Noranda.
Consequently, a lot more scrap metal will be redirected to the landfills. A few years ago, when a U.S. state imposed similar legislation on the handling of lead automobile batteries, the lead recycling industry there went belly-up. It came as no surprise when the potentially toxic batteries began showing up in dumps by the thousands.
Although the Mining Association of Canada has been working all summer to convince the government that recyclable hazardous wastes should be treated separately, the group is up against international confusion over the definition of hazardous waste and a government that is under pressure to monitor cross-border shipments. Environment Canada is also concerned about so-called “sham recyclers” — shippers who say they will recycle but who are actually planning to dump their waste illegally. Yet, despite the shaky outlook, Sippel is confident that if the mining industry can jump this environmental hurdle, it will continue to nurture the scrap business as a sideline. The irony is that this environmentally friendly business might get the axe because of environmental legislation.
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