In the late 1940s, a Chicago cabdriver named Benjamin Sims spotted an abandoned cast iron radiator by the side of the road and sold it for $5 at a scrap yard.
Soon, Sims was picking up more scrap than passengers, and, by the early 1950s, he had founded a company now known as United Recycling Industries. The firm still turns discards into dollars, but for more than a decade its West Chicago plant has focused on the fastest-growing segment of the recycling industry: electronic waste from computer equipment.
“Electronic waste is the single greatest problem the United States faces from a landfill perspective,” said Robert Glavin, United Recycling Industries president and CEO since 1982. “It’s not biodegradable, and so much of it is hazardous; the toxic metals can leach into groundwater.”
To better process the more than 18 million pounds of computer scrap it receives annually from municipalities in DuPage and Kane Counties and companies as far away as St. Louis, URI recently installed a state-of-the-art computer shredding system at its West Chicago plant at a cost of nearly $4 million.
Dubbed Shred Force One, the giant shredder reduces computers to pieces the size of a quarter at the rate of 4 tons an hour, while salvaging steel, copper, zinc, aluminum, plastics and precious metals for recycling and resale. Toxic materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium are processed according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.
Funded in part with an initial $250,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs (DCCA), the project also received a DCCA grant for $75,000 to implement a program that can recycle as many as 5,000 cathode ray tubes from computers each day.
“Electronics recycling is an industry that is growing, but it needs some help,” said Brian Reardon, a DCCA spokesman. “We look for companies that will give us the most bang for the buck as far as jobs that will be created and the amount of goods that will be recycled. URI is a leader in the Midwest for the recycling processes that they have implemented, and they are expanding.”
Once housed in a 15,000-square-foot building in Carol Stream, the company moved into an 85,000-square-foot facility in West Chicago in early 1999. A few months later, it rented a second building, and another expansion late last year brought total floor space to 290,000 square feet.
In awarding the $250,000 grant, DCCA director Pam McDonough cited consumer electronics as the fastest-growing segment in the municipal solid waste stream, as well as a potential environmental threat if not properly recycled. The state agency’s most recent statistics show that more than 20 million personal computers became obsolete in the U.S. in 1998, and the National Safety Council predicts that figure will grow 18 percent a year through 2007.
Shred Force One represents the largest capital investment to date for the privately held and largely family run company, which also operates a precious metals refining and smelting plant in Franklin Park. Together, the plants employ about 125 people and gross about $40 million annually, Glavin said.
“We’re gambling that in years to come, legislatures will be passing laws mandating [more environmentally responsible] recycling,” Glavin said. “We want to be in front of the curve rather than behind it. We opened this shredder in 2002, but we feel that we really are a recycling center for 2007.
“One of my sons said this is like our `Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, they will come,” added Glavin, whose sons, Jim and Mark, are URI vice presidents. Glavin’s wife, Linda Post, is company comptroller, and their daughter, Amanda, is environmental health and safety officer.
Glavin said that, to his knowledge, only two other similar state-of-the-art electronics shredders are in use, one in California and one in Canada. URI is one of only a few recycling companies that refurbishes and resells computers, usable chips and other components he said.
URI also partners with Compaq in an “electronic take-back” program in which computer owners may ship obsolete equipment of any make to the West Chicago plant for $27.99 and receive discounts on future Compaq purchases.
