Evan Eldridge 708 Sproul Hall University Park, PA, 16802 April 8, 2012

Dear Pennsylvania State Board Member or to whom it may concern,

Sunday the 8th of April around 10 oclock at night there are 2,272 open computers open on the University Park campus of Penn State University. Consider the mass of other computers that were currently occupied by people. Consider all attached printers in these computer labs. Consider all the lighting used in these computer labs, and elsewhere everywhere on campus. Consider the thousands of televisions that reside on campus. Consider the fact that the technologically progressive campus that this is, is constantly modernizing. Just imagine the mass of electronics that move through their lifetimes on this campus. There is a constant and massive stream of outdated electronic material moving into and out of just this
Fig. 1: Open Computers on Campus on April 8, 2012

campus. Now consider the other 19 Penn State locations. As a proudly green university, it is not strange to see or hear the phrase Penn State is BLUE, WHITE, and GREEN. Our university takes countless steps to ensure its sustainability and small negative environmental impact. We do have a process to recycle this mass of e-waste that is rated very highly according to the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (McKeague). Part of the process though, involves a disconnected e-waste recycler that IS NOT state certified. This implies possible questioning as to where the old materials are sent and how they are handled, besides being a long and disjointed process that crosses the state several times. Penn State University needs to use a Pennsylvania State certified electronics recycler to control their mass of waste, and one company named eLoop llc. is offering just that. Before I continue I would like to describe exactly what electronics waste is and its potential for environmental and health concerns, so to understand the importance in knowing exactly how the waste is handled and where it goes. A good thing to note is the very contents of an average computer.
It contains heavy metals (such as Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Barium, Arsenic, Beryllium, Chromium, Selenium), precious metals (such as Gold, Silver, Platinum), metals (such as Copper, Aluminium), refractory oxides (such as SiO2, Al2O3) and Halogenated compounds (Brominated Flame Retardants such as Poly Brominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) and Poly Brominated Biphenyls (PBBs), Chlorinated compounds such as Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) or plastics containing Poly Chlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and Poly Chlorinated Diphenyl Ether (PCDEs)).E- waste is disposed-off improperly by open burning, incineration and landfilling methods. Toxic Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals are produced along with the emission of Green House Gases (GHGs) during their disposal. Devika, S. Environmental Impact of Improper Disposal of Electronic Waste

In every computer and most other electronics that when disposed of are considered e-waste, there is the existence of these dangerous materials. These items, when just tossed in a landfill, are considered hazardous (Devika). This is why knowing exactly what happens to the computer that you are done with is critically important. When left in a place such as a landfill, the dangerous elements involved with these electronics can have a notable and negative impact on the environment and even put humans at risk. Left for life in a landfill, the mentioned harmful materials escape through the soil and into groundwater. Though written in the less technological world of the early 1960s, Rachel Carsons Silent Spring describes the monumental repercussions of any harmful chemicals entering the soil and groundwater. Water must also be thought of in terms of the chains of life it supports from the small-as-dust green cells of the drifting plant plankton, through the minute water fleas to the fishes that strain plankton from the water and are in turn eaten by other fishes or by birds, mink, raccoons in an endless cyclic transfer of materials from life to life. We know that the necessary minerals in the water are so passed from link to link of the food chains. Can we suppose that poisons we introduce into water will not also enter into these cycles of nature (Carson 46)? She describes soil that cant recover and a global water supply that is totally connected to each other. This means that pollution in one area, affects water far away, no matter how remote the destination of the landfill/dump/disposal area of the electronics; their dangers can be felt everywhere. In a water supply that is

connected to humans, the health effects can be serious. Devika describes most of these elements as carcinogens that can affect many parts of the body. She also describes the possible birth defects and the lead content, along with other heavy metals used in the electronics, presenting their own threats to the body as well. At first when people realized these threats it became common to pay third world countries to take the waste. Here poor people from countries like Ghana would try to extract the valuable parts from the waste for resale, coming into contact with all the above physical threats. Complete assurance of proper disposal of e-waste is necessary to prevent environmental decline and human safety everywhere. Proper waste techniques have been discovered and are now practiced by many green companies, but there still exists recycling programs that only claim to be handling it properly. A proper disposal of electronic waste, which I have witnessed and worked in, includes a complete teardown in an appropriate setting. The materials contained inside the electronics are completely separated and sorted. You can see separate places for straight plastics, heavy metals, precious metals, aluminum, boards, wires, and more. From there the separate materials are sent to completely vetted (here meaning investigated and scrutinized completely to ensure correct handling) companies who either recycle the material or dispose of it in the correct way. In this way the negative environmental and health effects of electronic disposal are eradicated.

Penn State does very well at this point to handle their electronics in a responsible way, but it is not the best or most efficient it could be. The current system involves taking all disused electronics and sending them to the Surplus department, handled by OPP (N. Eldridge). They then clean the items and see what can still be used. Here the more high-end items with data security issues are sent elsewhere to be dismantled and have their data destroyed. The other items that can be reused are then put to auction to be bought by Penn State staff, students, and sometimes the public. From there though a large group of anything that cant or wasnt sold through the auction goes to an electronics company based in Eastern Pennsylvania called Keystone State Auctioneers, not a state certified electronics recycler. They in turn auction again many items, but
Fig. 2: Lion Surplus Webpage

send their scrap to

eLoop llc., a western Pennsylvania state-certified recycler. They do not have a certified data destruction capability and so cannot take Penn States high-end items. This process is inefficient in that it involves too many locations stretching from Centre County to Williamsport in the east part of the state back to Plum in the west side of the state. It has too many people to pay; not to mention the extra environmental cost of the transit all over the state of these materials.

eLoop llc., whom Keystone State Auctioneers is even a collection point in Williamsport, is offering to handle all of the e-waste produced by the university. Instead of Penn State sending some of its e-waste to one certified data destructor, some of it to be auctioned to staff and students, some of it to be auctioned in Williamsport, and the rest of it to be sent all the way back to Pittsburgh at eLoop; as the state-certified electronics recycler, eLoop llc. is able to process all of the material sent from the university, even offering to create a collection center right in Centre County (N. Eldridge). They have security measures high enough to handle the destruction of all data before being scrapped and recycled, and the size and capability to handle the large amount of waste produced. Also, they would continue to let the university handle their Surplus Auction program. In the end, eLoop llc. could handle with one company, all of the waste that currently is sent into three different arenas across the state. After eLoop, the materials are sent to one hundred percent vetted companies for responsible disposal or recycling, so the threat of an environmental impact is eliminated. What eLoop llc. is offering is more comprehensive, more streamlined, and more environmentally conscious. Mentioned a few times were certified or uncertified companies. eLoop has, over the past few years, acquired a BAN certification and ISO 14001 certification. These both denote that eLoop has a certified environmental management system that is superior in health and safety. They have also received a PA Department of Environmental Protection permit. This is considered a beneficial use permit, and gives them authority to demanufacture electronic waste (N. Eldridge). The other companies currently in use do not have these certifications.

As the blue, white, and green campus we claim to be, it should be our aim to ensure that we are handling our waste, especially waste with such a potential environmental threat, in the certifiably best and safest way. eLoop llc. should be the designated recycler for Penn State, as to guarantee not only that all our e-waste is disposed of and recycled correctly, but that it is done in the most efficient way possible to cut environmental impact on all levels. Our alma mater cries out not only to the glory of old state today and in the past, but to the future that we wait as well. Ensure positive environmental practices now, to ensure a better world for our posterity.

Respectfully,

Evan Eldridge Penn State University Freshman

Works Cited

Carson, Rachel, and Louis Darling. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Print. Devika, S. Environmental Impact of Improper Disposal of Electronic Waste. Sathyabarna University, Chennai, India. Web. 8 Apr. 2012. Eldridge, Ned D. "Talk with the CEO of ELoop Llc." Telephone interview. 4 Apr. 2012. "Green Efforts." Penn State's Computer Store. Penn State University. Web. 08 Apr. 2012. <http://computerstore.psu.edu/green>. "Lion Surplus." Lion Surplus. Penn State University. Web. 08 Apr. 2012. <http://www.surplus.psu.edu/Surplus/>. McKeague, Shelley. "Penn State University: OP-20: Electronic Waste Recycling Program." Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System. STARS. Submitted: July 11, 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2012. <https://stars.aashe.org/institutions/pennsylvania-state-universitypa/report/2011-07-29/2/15/51/>. Xing, Guan Hua. Environmental impact and human exposure to PCBs in Guiyu, an electronic waste recycling site in China. Environment international 35.1 01 Jan 2009: 76-82. Elsevier. 08 Apr 2012.