Quantum hosted our 3rd annual Golf Day recently – our biggest yet! Thanks to our valued customers and partners for a great day and the to the staff at Wooden Sticks for making us feel welcome yet again. The weather was perfect, the course was impeccable, and a good time was had by all. Special thanks to our own Ari Prassinos for organizing everything and making this event come alive.
Have you ever wondered what happens to the shredded bits of hard drive generated through Quantum’s Enhanced Data Destruction Process? Not only is the process secure, but it’s good for the environment too.
Hard drives are fed into Quantum’s NIST-certified hard drive shredder that spit out a 3/4” or smaller particle size, meeting RCMP and DoD-data destruction requirements. Onsite or offsite, once your hard drives are shredded, your data is destroyed forever.
A shredded hard drive consists of various commodities such as steel, aluminum, circuit board and plastic, all of which are 100% recyclable.
Once enough shredded hard drives have been accumulated, we transfer the material for final processing.
The shredded hard drives are loaded into Quantum’s massive four shaft shredder, taking the hard drive pieces and reducing them into even smaller pieces.
Now it’s time to start separating the various commodities. The shredding process generates what are called “fines” and the first separation that occurs is via a magnet that pulls the ferrous fines from the non-ferrous fines. Fines are similar to coarse sand in consistency and fall through a screen in the shredder leaving bigger pieces for additional sortation. As fines are relatively high in precious metal content, they are sent downstream for refining.
Another magnet pulls out the bigger pieces of ferrous metal, throwing them onto a different conveyor and into a container destined for the local steel mill. Steel is one of the least valuable metals, but is easily and infinitely recycled. Additional sorting in the form of manual labour ensures a high degree of purity.
The remaining materials basically consist of plastics, copper, aluminum and circuit board. Copper and aluminum are what are known as non-ferrous metals, meaning they are not magnetic. This makes sorting them challenging, which is why we employ what’s called an eddy current to help the process. Eddy currents apply an electrical charge to the metals causing them to become temporarily “magnetized” and to jump off the conveyor into a new stream.
The remaining material is sent down two separate conveyors – one containing mostly plastic with some circuit board and one containing mostly aluminum and circuit board. Circuit boards represent the single highest value item in a hard drive so we want to isolate them for precious metal recovery. This is achieved via a series of hand sorting stations.
As the shredded hard drives makes their way down the line, the bigger pieces get sorted out leaving smaller and smaller bits which are too hard to sort manually. Quantum uses an automatic sorting system known as an optical finder. This machine sends material flying down a conveyor at high speeds taking several thousands of photos a second which measure the size, shape, colour, density and location of the various bits as they travel down the conveyor. As the materials fly off the end of the conveyor, one of over a hundred air jets will fire, sending a particular piece either flying or falling, achieving separation of the remaining metal from the plastic and from the circuit boards.
A final manual sortation is performed to achieve the highest level of quality possible. Material can also be reintroduced at any point in the process if it needs additional sorting. The final product consists of copper, steel, aluminum, plastic and circuit board. Each commodity is sent to an approved and verified downstream vendor for final refinement into a raw commodity for use in any number of products.
Now accepting electronics at Habitat For Humanity ReStore (Fonthill)! Everything is recycled and funds go towards a great cause – Habitat For Humanity.
The depot is located at 2499 Highway 20 East in Fonthill, ON and is open Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 5 PM.
More information can be found on their website – http://www.habitatniagara.ca/restore
IT hardware budgets increased slightly for 2018, according to Tech Republic research from last year, with more than half of respondents saying their organizations would dedicate more to IT this year. This is good news for your IT department, but with the increasing focus on e-waste and its toll on the environment, you may be wondering if there’s a way to maximize your hardware budget while doing something good for the environment. The answer is yes, and the secret may be in plain sight: the retired laptops and computers that may still be sitting on desks or are in the storeroom.
If your company has finally decided it’s time to get rid of those older office laptops and computers, why not contact a recycler and get paid for your old equipment through either reuse or recycling? However, while it’s great to cash in on your old assets, it’s important to remember that the sooner you do this the greater the payback you will receive.
“It’s not unusual for us to get calls about reuse and recycling options for computer hardware a number of years after the items have been retired from regular use,” says Clayton Miller, vice-president, business development, Quantum Lifecycle Partners. “Sometimes people think they may eventually reuse the hardware but often it’s just forgotten after it’s out of sight. We always tell people to contact us sooner rather than later. Like a car, it’s best to get rid of electronics as soon as they’re retired because that’s when their value will be highest.”
Miller offers a few suggestions that will help maximize your budget when buying hardware.
When you’re ready to move older assets out the door, it’s vital to engage a reputable, certified ITAD company to help manage the disposal process. This is the most important part of the disposition process and you will get what you pay for so don’t be price sensitive. We know there are some operators who will say, “I’ll dispose of this for free” but offer no details. Be wary! Spend some money on data destruction. If it’s really important that your data be secure (and let’s face it, what company is not in this category), you want a fully certified recycler such as Quantum who offers secure, compliant destruction with serial number capture and a certificate of destruction.
Just because you’re finished with your hardware doesn’t mean that it can’t be very useful for someone else after the data has been fully wiped. Quantum believes that reuse is the best form of recycling since it uses fewer resources and less labour and is therefore much better for the environment. They offer a comprehensive suite of IT asset disposition solutions for all types and sizes of companies. The good news for your company is that you can get a cut of the revenue from the reuse of your assets.
A third option for maximizing the value of older computer assets is a commodity rebate on scrap equipment, even if it’s broken. There are a number of valuable commodities in computer hardware including gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium. A recent study by the United Nations University and the International Telecommunication Union showed that, in 2016, materials from discarded e-waste were worth an estimated US$55 billion. The bottom line is to make sure you get paid for your scrap.
If you have questions about the disposition of your company’s computer assets or any other e-waste, contact Quantum today to discuss options to put money back in your pocket.
As a busy VAR representing many lines of business, you don’t have time to chase ITAD customers, yet you don’t want to miss out on good opportunities either. The good news is that you don’t have to if you partner with the right recycler. A responsible recycler with a good channel program can find and take care of ITAD opportunities for you. You’ll earn the extra revenue without any of the headaches.
Quantum is a good example of a recycler that deals almost exclusively with ITAD. Ari Prassinos, director of business development with Quantum, set up the company’s channel program and he says it’s an important and strategic part of their business.
“We work with all areas from OEMs and distributors to traditional VARs and system integrators,” he explains. “For us, a great channel program boils down to three simple things: make it easy, stay committed to the channel, and make it profitable.”
Quantum makes a channel program easy by offering a complete ITAD solution for your clients. Quantum knows that you don’t have time to chase this business whereas they have the resources to be your dedicated ITAD team. Therefore, if you want to take a hands off approach, they can find and close ITAD opportunities for you. In effect, they are an extension of your sales and service team. In an alternate scenario, you can simply offer Quantum’s ITAD solution as part of an upsell in your standard sales process, making your clients’ lives easier and closing the door on the chance for clients to use a competitor’s ITAD solution.
Quantum recognizes that it’s relatively easy to create a channel program but it takes hard work and dedication to become a trusted channel partner. Prassinos suggests that before you take on a recycler as a channel partner, you ask to speak to other partners they are already working with and ask questions. He also suggests scheduling a visit to the recycler’s facility.
“Don’t trust us until we can prove to you that we can be trusted. Ultimately, you own the relationship with the client,” says Prassinos. “I’ll give you an example. A partner engaged us to work directly with one of their clients. After we had completed the project, the client contacted us directly for another project, but instead of working directly with the end user and keeping the extra revenue, we contacted the partner and ensured they were kept in the loop with the engagement and, of course, with their back-end rebates. That’s the way we work at Quantum.
Finally, Quantum realizes that there is revenue to be made in ITAD, not just in the recycling and remarketing of used IT gear but also in data destruction, logistics and project management. Many businesses miss out on this marginal revenue because they are not able to offer services such as crushing hard drives or scheduling trucks for pickup of old equipment. As Prassinos notes, “It’s an easy program and there’s no investment. Most deployment projects offer a decommissioning opportunity that can yield double digit margins. Do not leave money on the table!”
Quantum has a brand new facility in Toronto and has been serving the Canadian market for more than five years. They handle all assets from “cradle to grave” and are OES and PCI compliant with multiple industry certifications such as R2, RQO and NAID-Canada.
“We offer a closed loop solution. So let us do all the work for you and you can just pat us on the back!” says Prassinos. “We guarantee anything we touch will be recycled completely and ethically and we make sure our clients are protected and secure at all times.”
If you’re ready to discuss your ITAD solution, contact Quantum today.
The concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is spreading and evolving around the world and, with recently passed legislation, Ontario may now be ground zero for a new way of managing WEEE.
The starting point for this transformation was the passage of the Waste Free Ontario Act (Bill 151) on June 1, 2016. With a circular economy as the eventual goal, Bill 151 is considered ground breaking for several reasons:
For the first time anywhere in the world, the Waste Free Ontario Act marks a pronounced shift towards Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for all products — e-waste, tires, packaging, compost and eventually, everything else.
“In 20 years, it will be very hard to find a product sold in Ontario that doesn’t have a stewardship obligation against it. In its scope and progressivity, there is nothing like this particular legislation,” says Clayton Miller, Vice-President, Business Development, Quantum Lifecycle Partners. “It’s a whole new way of looking at waste, not just e-waste. The intent of the legislation is to put responsibility for waste at the feet of the producers and manufacturers that made the products in the first place.”
The Waste Free Ontario Act has five primary goals:
The second part of Bill 151, the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, considers end-of-life materials as resources rather than waste, which will result in fewer raw materials used and possibly the production of long-lasting, reusable goods. The focus on reuse will create opportunities for the recycling sector to innovate and reuse more, recycle less and generally drive down the overall costs of recycling.
Under this new regime, compliance and enforcement activities will be overseen by the Authority who will operate the Resource Productivity and Recovery Registry. This outcomes-based producer responsibility regime is the watchdog for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and ensures that consumers, stewards, governments, manufacturers and service providers all fulfill their recycling obligations.
An Incentive for Innovation and New Life for ReuseThe new legislation will not only incentivize innovative design and collection models but also encourage reuse by counting it toward diversion targets. As things stand today, it is difficult for an e-waste recycler to compliantly reuse products that are qualified under the provincial stewardship programs – even if that makes the most economic and environmental sense. The new legislation recognizes that in addition to reuse is a higher form of recycling and has the potential to lower overall recycling costs.
While the new legislation makes reuse a higher priority than other forms of recycling, it’s still unclear exactly what specific activities will be allowed. Canadian recyclers are advocating to allow certified, audited and traceable reuse to be counted toward recycling targets. This would mark a significant change to how stewardship performance has been measured historically where per pound diversion targets are the only metric that mattered.
The Waste Free Ontario Act is an ambitious rethink of how to manage waste. While the focus is currently on recycling tires, batteries, e-waste and the household Blue Box program, eventually all waste will have some sort of recycling requirement. Consider this often used but powerful statistic: Every 1,000 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill generates seven full-time jobs, $360,000 CAD in wages and $711,000 CAD in GDP. The economic benefits of recycling more waste could be huge.
With a current provincial recycling rate of only 25 per cent, there is significant room for improvement. Considering just e-waste specifically, Canada has done a good job enacting and harmonizing provincial stewardship programs from coast to coast. Ontario is taking it a step further with this Act, and this is an opportunity to foster the next wave of innovation in e-waste recycling. Industry will be encouraged to innovate, collaborate and solve problems in a competitive environment that values compliance, security and environmental performance. It’s an opportunity that is there for the taking, and the rest of the world will be watching.
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