Amid dwindling legal export markets for plastics generated from mixed electronics waste in the U.S., CompuCycle has developed a shredding, cleaning, and sorting system to produce materials that can be recycled domestically.
With over 50 million tons of electronic waste generated annually worldwide, 20 percent of which contains plastic materials. The disposal and recycling of e-plastics have emerged as a critical issue. These complex materials often contain hazardous substances such as brominated flame retardants and heavy metals. This not only makes them a challenge to recycle but also poses a significant risk to both the environment and health if not managed properly. Due to this, most e-waste and e-plastics end up in landfills across the world.
CompuCycle's electronics recycling plant features two four-shaft shredders, a quad Q100, and a quad Q70 from SSI Shredding Systems. This processing line breaks down end-of-life IT electronics (e-waste) into individual components.
"That's why I truly do call it the wow machine, because to see it from going up one conveyor belt and then turning into this next piece of material of really raw components of that steel, plastic, aluminum, copper and boards, it's just amazing," says Kelly Adels Hess, CEO of CompuCycle.
The success of that initial system created more opportunity to dive even further into the art of recycling and to tackle the growing e-plastics problem.
"CompuCycle wanted a shredder versatile enough to handle bulk-fed loads of e-plastics originating from any processor out there. Our SR500 Uni-Shear is able to hold up to four cubic yards of volume and make small, well-liberated output size so it's perfectly suited for this task," says Dave Fleming, vice president of sales and marketing at SSI Shredding Systems.
In November of 2023, CompuCycle went live with its e-plastics processing plant. This system features a single-shaft Uni-Shear SR500 and sink-float tanks can separate e-plastics down further into its base components such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and ABS plastics.
