One was to assess the average age of material collected. The other was to analyze costs and presumed
value added by demanufacturing these materials.
For the purpose of this study, “brown goods” included such items as TV’s, VCR’s and stereo
equipment. The materials were from residential sources, collected at the IPF at the one-day drop off events or delivered by local municipalities. Each item to be included in the study was weighed and inspected for a date of manufacture and name brand. This information was noted and the dismantling staff would then record the start time and separate each component into the following categories: A
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Boards, Aluminum, CRT’s, D Boards, Iron-Aluminum, Scrap metal, Transformers, Trash, Wire, and Yolks. When all demanufacturing was complete, the total weight from each of the categories was calculated and recorded.
The data collected by the dismantling staff was transferred from the record sheets into an MS Excel spreadsheet. Calculations were made for demanufacturing time, average year of manufacture, average weight, and cost or revenue for disposal or recycling of each material.
There were mixed results in attaining the goal of an age assessment of the materials collected. Thirty-one televisions were studied ranging from 1973 to 1989 for an average age of manufacture of 1982. These TV’s were chosen at random from the supply within the IPF. A total of forty-two VCR’s were used, ranging from 1984 to 1989 and averaged to 1986. The stereo equipment did not yield any usable information as to the year of manufacture. There were so few items that had this information that any average calculated would not have been a fair representation of the entire load. It should also be noted that of the 31 TV’s and 42 VCR’s studied; many did not contain information on date either.
Included after this text is a spreadsheet (Chart 1) documenting the demanufactured parts of the materials used in this study. As seen on Chart 1, when calculating straight material costs, the demanufacturing operation creates revenue. Total revenue equals $142 and costs for recycling CRT’s and trash disposal are $119 for net revenue of $23. Had these materials gone to the landfill, our tip fee would have been $104. Therefore, one could say that demanufacturing and recycling this equipment was a $127 benefit to the IPF. The procedure becomes less attractive when labor costs are factored in. The total cost to perform the demanufacturing is $407. As seen on Chart 2, all items studied except for televisions took 3-4 minutes per pound to demanufacture. TV’s take only 1 to 1.5 minutes per pound. We found similar time requirements for TV’s and computer electronics in the OWM’s Scrap Electronics Project Report submitted to the Chelsea Center in June 1998. The longer demanufacturing times for other brown goods may be due in part to the fact that our laborers were unfamiliar with this equipment and know TV’s and computers much better. Another factor is that there tends to be a lot more small pieces in the brown goods that do not have a lot of weight. This causes high labor costs for very little return in revenue.
The hopes of determining a reliable date of manufacture for all materials were not well met in this study. The nature of the equipment collection may be part of the problem. Because much of the material came from the one-day collections at the UMASS facility, most of it looked like the kind of things that have been sitting in the basement for years. Many items were missing the parts that may have had the date information or they simply never had such information attached. This was
especially true of the stereo equipment. These collections represented first time clean out for many residents and as the electronics-recycling program continues, the equipment should be newer and newer. In the “Detailed Inventory” section of this report, average age of manufacture is represented for TV’s collected after the Brown Goods Study was concluded. There was larger data set to choose from so that is a more representative date than the Brown Goods Study TV date.
In terms of cost, most brown goods seem much less worth demanufacturing than computers or
televisions. Stereo equipment ends up having a large portion of trash (plastic, wood, etc.) and takes a long time to take apart. VCR’s are similar, but repair shops indicate a high success rate for repair and
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resale so that may be the best avenue for them. TV’s are most worth demanufacturing of all items studied. A bald CRT is much less expensive to send to the recycler than a whole television. In addition to a lower per pound charge for bald CRT’s, there would be less total weight going to the recycler. There is circuitry, wire, and a yoke that are revenue items in TV’s that help offset the cost of disposal of the casing. The value of demanufacturing TV’s would depend heavily on the scale of an operation.
Chart 1