Hi Tech Recycling Ltd., a Toronto based computer recycler, has been featured in many publications, in addition to various interviews with many television stations such as City TV, CFMT and The Discovery Channel. Click on any of the bookmarks below to read articles from some of Toronto's top newspapers.

Interview with CNET
New life for hi-tech junk - Toronto Sun
Discarded computers hazardous in landfill - Globe and Mail
Where old computers go to die - Toronto Star
Computer Composting - Financial Post

A Greener Path for Dead Chips
(Interview with CNET)

Click here to listen to the experts in electronic recycling.

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New life for hi-tech junk
(Toronto Sun, August 25, 1999)

Look up the word 'obsolete' in the dictionary and you'll probably find a picture of your computer.

In this fast-forward age of constant change, it sometimes seems nothing becomes worthless faster than your humble desktop computer.

A fortune today, a boat anchor tomorrow, you might say. The Freedman family in North York couldn't be happier about that sad fact of life.

To them, hi-tech junk is cash.

The Freedmans, dad Max, sons Adam, Eli, David and various uncles are the modern-day version of the scrap yard.

Hardly surprising since Grandpa Freedman ran an auto wreckers in his time in Detroit.

"It's called recycling today, but it's the same business," shrugs Eli. "Our father started up a computer recycling business in Mexico just after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake," Adam says. "There were lots of mainframe computers that were damaged and he built a business breaking them down for salvage."

In 1993, Max moved back to Toronto to reunite with the family and after looking around decided the market was right for a hi-tech recycling business.

Since then Hi Tech Recycling (www.hitechrecycling.com) has expanded into three industrial units on Champagne Dr. in Downsview with about 6,000 square feet.

Despite its name, it's a labour-intensive, strictly analog venture - one of a handful of operations in the GTA mining the recycling of defunct hi-tech equipment.

"Companies contract with us. They pay us, or in some cases we pay them, to take their equipment. We bring it here and start separating the components," Adam says.

Everything from desktops to mainframes, cell phones to modems, networking equipment to switches pass through the loading dock to be dismantled.

Plastic cases are sorted into 34 different categories; metal chassis frames are similarly sorted, hard drives to a separate bin, wiring to another, cables and plugs to their areas.

"The plastic can be recycled, the metal smelted down and reused and the circuit boards, about 24,000 pounds a month, are smelted and semi-precious and base metals like copper and aluminum recovered," Adam says. "The monitors go to a joint venture company where they are crushed and the components, like the glass and metal, are separated out and recovered. That's the really expensive part of the process."

Their location is a magnet for hobbyists who know they can always find an obscure part or motor.

What can be reused is sent to operations like Bell Pioneers' Computers For Schools program or Reboot, a similar venture which fixes up older computers for non-profit organizations and charities.

They in turn send their "junk-junk" to Hi Tech.

"They do a great job", says Lorne Scheelar, of Computers For Schools. "This stuff shouldn't be ending up in landfill. About 30% of what we get in is pure junk that really can't be upgraded to a useful machine for a school."

And that's the point, Eli Says. "We're trying to educate people," he says. "We're trying top stop sending this stuff to a landfill because it doesn't break down."

And as more and more computers reach the end of their life-cycles there's also the environmental issue to be considered. Main boards often contain traces of toxic chemicals like mercury and chromium, while monitors can contain lead.

Individually they're not much of an environmental threat but the numbers soon add up. One U.S. study suggests that by 2002 some 63.3 million computers a year will become obsolete in America alone.

Consumers with machines collecting dust are also welcome to drop them off free of charge at the company's loading dock during business hours Adam says.

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Discarded computers hazardous in landfill
(Globe and Mail, October 10, 2001)

If not recycled, substances in old monitors and circuits end up fouling air and water

Eli Freedman has a good view of where old computers are sent to die.

He helps operate one of Canada's largest recyclers of used computer equipment, trying to salvage the scrap metals they contain and prevent their hazardous components from polluting the environment.

Every work day, about 300 to 500 computers get ripped apart at his Toronto company to recover their metals, such as copper, aluminum and silver, worth from $1.50 to $2.50 per junked machine.

"Basically, we strip them," said Mr. Freedman, vice-president of Hi-Tech Recycling (Canada) Ltd. "It's intense, manual labour."

But only about half of the old computers, disk drives, printers and other former high-technology equipment used in Canada is being recycled or reused. The rest are dumped into landfills or burned, where they pose a big potential health threat because they contain an array of hazardous materials, such as lead.

There are fears the disposal problem could grow dramatically as the millions of computers sold in the 1990s begin to get junked.

The federal government is about to publicly release three new reports warning that a big effort has to be made to increase the recycling of old computers, monitors, and even telephones and cell phones, because they contain potentially toxic material.

Dangerous substances are found in information-technology equipment, including mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium, hexavalent chromium, brominated flame retardants, PCBs and polyvinyl chloride.

When dumped into landfills, the toxic compounds can leach out and pollute groundwater. When computers are burned, the dangerous substances are released into the atmosphere and contaminate the incinerator ash. Burning plastics and flame retardants also lead to the production of carcinogenic dioxins and furans.

A summary of the three reports was issued yesterday by the Recycling Council of Ontario.

The federal government is planning to release them later this month or in November, pending their translation into French. However, Duncan Bury, an official at Environment Canada's office of pollution prevention, said the summary was largely accurate.

One of the reports offered the government six policy options for dealing with computer waste. Under review are programs ranging from voluntary industry efforts to promote recycling to forcing the computer companies to have full responsibility for taking back old machines from consumers.

Banning computers from landfills and giving industry responsibility for old equipment has been adopted by the European Union, but no jurisdiction in Canada has taken this step.

Mr. Bury said Manitoba is the closest to adopting the European approach and has just issued draft regulations on household hazardous waste that would require computer manufacturers to take back their machines for reuse or recycling.

One of the reports indicates that a full system of computer recycling, paid for by manufacturers, would cost at least $24-million annually in Canada. A second report speculates that computer recycling could become more profitable than automobile recycling.

Currently, there are more than 10 million computers in Canadian businesses, homes and educational institutions, with typical lifespans of three to five years before they are replaced.

Junked high-technology equipment amounts to 1 per cent to 2 per cent of the total solid waste stream from residential areas.

Toxic releases from computers and other information-technology equipment threaten to reverse much of the progress that has been made in getting dangerous material out of garbage.

Mercury and lead, for instance, have been removed from most of their once common uses, but both metals are found in computer equipment. One of the biggest hazards is computer monitors, which typically contain 0.7 to 2.7 kilograms of lead.

The dangerous material in high-technology equipment isn't a health hazard to users of the machines. But an environmental threat arises because of the huge amount of harmful material that computers could release into the environment. For instance, an estimated 15 per cent of all the lead found in municipal waste is believed to be coming from junked computer monitors.

And even though only 0.002 per cent of the weight of the average personal computer is mercury, that could add up to 500 kg annually.

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Where old computers go to die
(Toronto Star, January 1, 2001)

Some are recycled, but many are tossed into landfills, raising environmental issues

The noise is deafening.
The grinding of metal on metal, the whirring of fans, the spinning of belts.

This is the modern slaughterhouse of technology. Computers, cell phones and fax machines come here to die. Everything is shredded and automatically sorted by weight and composition. Video cameras capture the last moments of each machine as it enters the shredders.

"We can shred a photocopier into pieces the size of a guitar pick," says Sid Morris as he gives me a tour of Electronic Product Recycling Services Inc., the recycling plant where he works.

A recent study by Environmental consulting firm Enviros RIS for Environment Canada predicts that approximately 67,324 tonnes of personal computers, laptops, peripherals and monitors will be "disposed of" in 2005 - tossed into landfills and garage dumps.

But another 91,219 tonnes will be reused or recycled.

Each computer contains a robot's breakfast of hazardous materials, including cadmium, mercury and flame retardants used in the plastic.

So today's decisions about electronic waste could have long-lasting effects on the environment.

In Chicago stockyards, they used to say about slaughtered pigs that "we use everything but the squeal." Morris boasts that EPR's shredding machine, built last January, recycles 100 per cent of what goes into it.

"By the end of this year (2000) we will probably process in excess of 20,000 that will be kept out of landfills," he said.

The aluminum, zinc and copper waste that the machine separates into bins is sent to smelters such as Noranda Inc. in Quebec. Once processed, the smelter can sell the purified product back to industry.

But some of the waste products EPR's shredder pumps out don't have a second use yet.

There's not much that can be done with the black soot that falls like snow out of machines. It's mostly dust and toner from the photocopiers, with a shimmer of fine metal shavings.

The plastic housing used on computers is also still looking for a buyer. The material itself can vary quite a bit in composition, which makes it difficult for it to be efficiently reused. The plastic is generally treated with fire retardants, which release toxins if burned in some recycling processes.

Morris says several firms are studying the composition of the plastic to see if it can be used to produce fuel or sulphuric acid.

Then there's the item that Morris won't even put in the shredder: computer monitors.

Desktop displays are the hot potato of electronic waste.

No one wants to deal with the recycling of computer monitors because they contain far less valuable material than they do poison. That makes them a tricky commodity to recycle, especially for profit.

About 6 per cent of your standard desktop computer system is lead by weight. Some of that's in the solder that holds chips on circuit boards, but the most potentially harmful source of lead comes from the cathode ray tube in the monitor.

According to the Enviros RIS report, each monitor contains anywhere from 0.7 to 2.7 kg of lead. About 15 to 100 grams of that is water soluble, making it the most dangerous type of lead because it can leach into the water and soil if it's buried in a landfill.

In 1999, Canadians chucked 1,356 tonnes of lead from computers and monitors into landfills, according to the report by Enviros RIS.

Taken in small doses over time, lead can make you lose your mind.

Headaches. Hallucinations. Vomiting.

"We try to stay away from monitors because there is really very little value (in them)," said Adam Freedman, general manager of Hi Tech Recycling Ltd., a computer recycling plant in Downsview.

The people who work at Hi Tech use the same manual techniques they used when Freedman's father started the business over 20 years ago. It basically involves a screwdriver and a bit of muscle to break the equipment down into its component parts: motherboards, sound cards, wiring and computer shells.

Breaking it down any further - pulling tiny capacitors and resistors out of each board - would be tough and slow by hand.

"The manufacturers never thought of the opposite process of having to take them apart," said Freedman.

Chris Ober, an engineering professor at Cornell University, has developed a new glue that should make extracting valuable parts out of old computers easier. The glue, called Alpha-Terp, breaks down at just 221 degrees Celsius. That temperature is low enough that computer components won't be harmed.

New glue may make recycling easier:

It it's adopted by industry, Alpha-Terp could make the recycling of small computer parts like chips and resistors far more cost-and labour-efficient.

For now, Hi Tech sells whole motherboards and sound cards to smelters who will purify and resell the precious metals within.

By hand, the Downsview recycler processes about 500 machines a day.

Most of their material comes in large quantities from corporations, but consumers are also encouraged to drop off individual machines.

And while they'd rather not accept monitors, it's sometimes hard to turn them away when they come as a package deal with valuable components.

When a recycler does wind up with a monitor or two, they usually have to pay a smelter like Noranda to properly dispose of it.

During the smelting process, the plastic housing is safely burned off, producing a solid, lead-filled beasts in a landfill.

Concerned about the environmental impact, the state of Massachusetts made dumping cathode ray tubes from monitors and televisions illegal last April.

In the first five months of the program they have recycled 848 tonnes of monitors, televisions and CPUs and the latter weren't even included in the ban.

"One of the things that we're trying to do is get toxic substances like lead out of the waste stream," and Doug Pizzi, press secretary for environmental affairs in Massachusetts.

"Lead is such a potent substance that we felt that it really wasn't a good idea to have it going into the ground."

The process is simple. Collection centres were set up to handle waste in 275 to the 351 cities and towns in the state.

"First they screen the items to see if any are repairable. What can't be reused and repaired, it's demanufactured and disassembled," said Pizzi.

But environmental Canada isn't convinced that the lead in landfills is a problem.

"Frankly, there's no clear answer to the question at the moment," said Duncan Bury, head of product policy for Environment Canada's national office of pollution prevention.

"We don't have any definitive answers," he said.

"We need to look at to what degree it is available to the environment. If the lead is embedded in the glass it's not likely to be an issue, but if it's in a soluble form then we need to determine to what extent it is an issue."

Ottawa not sure lead in monitors a poison issue:

So what are we supposed to do with monitors in the interim?

"The idea is to hold on to them," said Bury. "What we're encouraging is reuse and the whole idea that we don't throw this kind of equipment out."

"Lead is listed in the toxic substances in schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and it is being considered as a candidate for the North American action plan," he added. "There may be some recommendations which come out of that."

While the government hasn't made up its mind whether tougher standards are necessary for electronic waste disposal, science and industry are looking at new approaches to the issue.

A couple of months ago, IBM started a buyback program in the United States for individuals and small businesses who need to dispose of any brand of IT equipment.

Users pay $29.99 (U.S.) for a special shipping label, box up their equipment and call UPS for pickup. IBM makes sure the equipment is disassembled and properly disposed of or refurbished for charity groups.

A spokesperson for the company said they need to see how the program fares in the United States before they will consider starting it in Canada or abroad.

For now, the best place for a consumer to go with their old computer is a place like Technology Learning Alliance in Toronto. The Alliance takes in old computers and uses them to train students and workfare participants how to install software and to some basic maintenance.

Hundreds of skids full of computers and monitors wait in the warehouse for one of the 30 or so students to assess and repair them.

Once they're in working order, the computers are given to schools, charities or sold to needy families for a modest price of less than $25 (Canadian).

Since the program was started in 1993, about 65,000 computers have come through the Alliance's doors.

That's a lot of plastic, aluminum and lead spared from the landfills.

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Computer Composting
(Financial Post, October 1995)

"I don't know much about computers, but one thing I do know is how to smash them up," says Adam Freedman, introducing his father's computer recycling business Hi Tech Recycling.

The idea to recycle unusable computer parts came to Adam's father, Max Freedman as a result of his once-a-week volunteer work in a Toronto-based project that refurbishes outdated PCs for people who need retraining. "This first year I put in money to keep going, the second year we broke even." This year, with the business savvy of his son who is actually a business consultant, Freedman says he might even make money and hire some help.

Max who retired from a career in electronics, operates out of an industrial building in Toronto. The warehouse is littered with boxes of circuit boards, precision electric motors, old hand-drives and tape units. On one side are the hulking ports of old mainframes and minicomputers. Nearby is a pile of old monitors.

Companies that used to just send their old junkers to the landfill are often happy to pack them off to be recycled instead, says Freedman. Mostly he hauls away old computers for free and relies on the scrap value of salvaged metals and parts to cover his cost. "This tape unit here," he points to a massive one-by-two-by-three-foot machine that once graced a mainframe installation, "costs about $10,000. Used, it might have cost $2,500. I might get about $65 for it - if I take less than one hour to take it apart."

Old circuit boards are sent in bulk to commercial refiners who grind them up and then process the grinds in furnaces at increasingly high temperatures to extract the metal like tin, copper and lead. Old disk-drives and other parts with metal frames and chassis are simply sold off for their scrap metal value at anywhere from 2 to 10 cents a pound.

The margins are so low that sometimes he has to charge companies his trucking costs to take away their unwanted computers.

"If I look over a lot and see that there's nothing there with any recycling value, I have to charge them."

And, as if to prove the adage that one man's junk is another man's treasure, local artists and entrepreneurs occasionally drop by to scavenge interesting looking bits and pieces for sculptural works or to turn into computer jewelry.