Advanced Recycling Technologies - Recycling Process

The Process

Once items arrival at our depot, they are sorted into categories ie: refrigeration devices, fluorescent lamps & e-waste.

E-waste

Our service manually dismantles the e-waste (we do not shred). This is a very labour intensive task.

Once the items have been dismantled into separate parts such as plastic, circuit boards, steel and glass, they are then forwarded onto associates to be recycled further.

These companies are specialists in their fields and have the ability, using state of the art machinery, to process the materials and refine them back to be re-used or turned into raw materials where they can be re-constituted.

Glass from TV's & monitors is known as CRT glass (Cathode Ray Tube).  This contains lead and many other hazardous materials, for this reason it is sent out as an intact tube to a specialist recycler.

Once it arrives at our associate the glass from the front panel is removed & sent to be recycled as normal glass is recycled. The remaining funnel section then goes through a cleaning process that removes dangerous substances in preparation for it to be recycled as a CRT product.

Circuit boards contain various metals which need to be processed by a specialist metal recycler, whom we forward these by products onto.

Plastics are forwarded to plastic recyclers who require large volumes of similar types of products to make recycling possible.

There are numerous types of plastics in e-waste.

Metals are sent to scrap metal recyclers whom have systems in place to be able to separate the various types of metals.

Recycling metal is reducing the environmental pressures that we put on the earths mineral resources.

Wood from TV,s & stereo cabinets is sent to an associate who has the ability to transfer this product from waste to an alternative fuel for a furnace.

Refrigeration Devices

Fridges/freezers & Air conditioners are decommissioned by taking ozone depleting refrigeration gas out of the unit (known as degassing).

This needs to be done responsibly by a licensed decommissioner who keep meticulous records on all the gas that is reclaimed, and can be audited by the Australian Refrigeration Council.

The reclaimed gas is then forwarded onto the wholesaler, who weighs the cylinders used to collect the gas and records the weight of the gas that is collected.

From there they are sent onto a special high temperature incinerator that burns the gases making them safe for the environment. The remainder of the unit then has any valuable materials removed & forwarded onto a scrap metal recycler.

Fluorescent lamps

Once we receive fluorescent lamps containing mercury at our depot. we sort & store them into special containers awaiting transport to an associate who have the latest crush & separation technology to remove mercury, glass, aluminium, & phosphorus powder.