Joplin e-scrap cleanup benefits from pre-planning

Joplin e-scrap cleanup benefits from pre-planning

By Jake Thomas, Resource Recycling

With help from homeowners who were willing to separate their debris and volunteers who lent a hand, contractors collected 156 tons of e-waste and 257 tons of white goods for recycling, following last May's tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri.

John Frey, federal on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says that the recycling efforts in post-disaster Joplin were comparable to similar situations. However, he notes that there were a few things different about Joplin.

"We probably would have had twice as much white goods, but we were competing against scrappers," says Frey, who recalls scrappers driving around Joplin after the tornado in large trucks picking up bulky appliances for their scrap metal.

Frey also says that unlike the clean-up from past disasters, like the 2008 floods that covered large expanses of Iowa, the EPA made $46,000 by selling white goods to Joplin-based Jordan Disposal, which has pickers that remove valuable metal from the appliances. Frey says that the EPA received a couple bids that charged for taking the white goods, but were turned down because the agency realized that there was money to be made.

The electronics were taken by Midwest Recycling Center, a St. Louis-based company that processed the material at its 53,000-square-foot facility in Park Hills, Missouri. Tony Krieg, the co-owner of the company, says MRC did the job pro-bono because of long-standing company connections with Joplin.

"We thought that the worst thing that could happen is if someone loses their home and then an illegitimate recycler found their computer and stole their identity," say Krieg.

Krieg says that his company moved all the e-scrap in 20 loads to its facility, which is currently pursuing an R2 certification, where it was disassembled mostly by hand. He describes the electronics that arrived at the facility as gnarled, twisted and embedded with dry wall, dirt and insulation.

For the full story on Joplin's disaster recycling cleanup, read the upcoming November issue of Resource Recycling [1]. Click here [1] to subscribe.

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