Data shows that our electronic waste stream, e-waste for short, has become a torrent, with more consumers tossing out broken or obsolete smartphones, laptops, tablets, printers, gaming consoles and more. Municipal recycling truck drivers and recycling drop-off centers in northwest Arkansas collect glass, plastics, cardboard, paper, steel and aluminum cans, but not e-waste.
But the good news is that a growing amount of regional recycled e-waste is captured by eSCO Processing and Recycling, LLC, located in Rogers. eSCO provides secure, efficient and environmentally responsible recycling services to municipalities, businesses, corporations, schools, institutions and the public across the two-state region. The company reduces electronic waste through certified processes and innovative recycling techniques at three locations, including Little Rock and Springfield, Missouri.
Joe Tucker, vice president of business development for eSCO cites an example of how perplexing it can be for consumers to decide what to do, for example, with obsolete cell phones.
"Should I trade it in? Or should I hang on to it, or what?" Tucker said. "And then by the end of ten years you have a desk full of old cell phones."
Most Arkansans don't want to trash their electronics, he said, but cities and towns in northwest Arkansas don't accept e-waste at the curb with other recyclables, so it ends up in the landfill.
"Considering the volume of all other trash, electronics take up something between 2 and 5% of the total of landfill space," he said. "But e-waste contributes on the order of 80 to 85% of the toxic metals in landfills, so cadmium, mercury, lead — all that stuff — the majority of it is coming from electronics."
Rechargeable batteries used to power game consoles, electric bikes, tools and more, if discarded, can catch fire inside garbage trucks or ignite landfill cells filled with compacted flammable refuse.
Tucker said batteries are recyclable, but compared to smelting aluminum cans, the process is energy-intensive.
"The problematic thing with batteries, especially these days, is they're encased in all sorts of other materials," he said. "In other words when you look at your cell phone, you can't see the battery. It's surrounded by glass and plastic, and glued onto a circuit board, so harvesting the battery of a cell phone takes some work. Once separated, they are sorted with other batteries to be shredded and smelted down to their component metals."
Recycled battery raw materials are shipped overseas to processors, he said, that recover the metals for reuse -- including lithium, a soft, silvery-white alkali metal classified as the lightest solid element on Earth.
Benton and Boston Mountain Solid Waste Districts, Madison County Solid Waste and Recycling Center, and the city of Fayetteville will accept drop-off batteries, including conventional lead-acid vehicle engine batteries, which are illegal to dump.
Regional waste districts bundle e-waste for shipment to eSCO for processing and recovery of aluminum, steel, and copper, as well as valuable gold and silver contained in computer circuit boards, which are also outsourced overseas for harvesting.
"We serve anybody from individuals dropping off something, to large corporations, financial institutions, hospital systems, school districts, municipalities," he said. "So, we have a very diverse list of clients. Our sweet spot is companies that are forced by the evolution of technology to replace their devices before they break."
eSCO's warehouse in Rogers accepts batteries and light bulbs for a nominal fee and also charges to sustainably recycle cathode ray televisions and computer monitors, along with LCD televisions and monitors.
"The most problematic part of the waste stream we deal with are televisions," he said. "So for the public to understand we do charge about $15 for an old style cathode ray tube TV. Those are toxic and need to stay out of the landfill and watershed."
Tucker walks through a room where warehouse staff use electronic screwdrivers to quickly disassemble electronics, most which contain mixed materials.
"We have a zero electronic components landfill policy. But plastic is a challenge. There are markets for e-waste plastic, but most is [flame retardant] brominated plastic, which cannot be recovered and reused for other purposes," he said.
Take a standard coffee maker, for example.
"It might have four or five different kinds of plastic in it. Maybe it's got a comfortable handle attached to a glass pot, usually with a stainless-steel strap around it. So the value in those commodities is pennies, and the labor to take it apart and recycle it appropriately is something we have to put in, if it comes here. So we do our very best to capture as much of those commodities as we can within an economic framework that makes some sense."
Demanufactured electronics materials are sorted and stacked onto pallets and shrink-wrapped for shipment to vetted downstream partners for raw materials reprocessing.
Tucker warns electronic consumers that simply throwing out smart phones, laptops, and hard drives may place them at risk for data breaches.
"This is the sound of data bearing hard drives being shredded," he said, entering eSCO's secure shredding facility. "This is a double key entrance hard drive storage room and our shredding process happens within it, which is video surveilled."
Only eSCO-authorized staff, he said, are allowed to destroy personal data housed in digital electronics that come through.
"Which is data destruction hard drive shredding, equipment tracking, or asset tracking and management at end-of-life," he explained. "We can all imagine our own personal risk with passwords and bank accounts tied to a phone or computer hard drive."
Tucker said the risk of data breaches for recycled electronics from corporate and institutional clients is much higher.
"It's just astronomical," he said, citing examples. "Retail point of sale transactions, hospital billing departments [under] HIPPA regulations, and we deal with some contractors that have Department of Defense security clearance. So the stakes are high in terms of wanting to make sure that nobody can get at that equipment after the fact, and that's why they would come to us as a certified [data destruction] partner [because] we're audited and held to the highest standard."
eSCO's mission is to promote environmental sustainability through responsible certified e-waste recycling, but the company also refurbishes electronics for resale.
"Our first choice always is to reuse a device or refurbish a device and put it back out into the secondary market of reused goods," he said. "On the refurbished market, often the procurement side of things has a little bit of trouble with refurbished goods, and they really shouldn't. The failure rate of a refurbished computer is even actually sometimes better than a brand new one out-of-the-box, so when we go thru them, they are up to spec."
eSCO remarkets refurbished items primarily on E-Bay and similar sites but is also partnered with the non-profit Free Geek on Ash Street in Fayetteville. Free Geek accepts large and small electrical appliances as well as e-waste and operates a used and refurbished electronics thrift store, open Wednesdays through Saturdays.
"First of all, we help them in terms of responsible recycling," Tucker said. "They're a customer of ours you would say, and they provide a great retail storefront experience for folks looking for refurbished items. And they actually do a wonderful job refurbishing."
NWA Recycles, a collaboration among Northwest Arkansas Council and regional solid waste districts, works to coordinate and improve recycling services, including e-waste recycling and recovery. A survey conducted by NWA Council in 2022 found that 80% of respondents believe recycling is important and are willing to recycle more. The council produced a 2024 regional recycling digital flipbook that provides lots more interesting data and a wealth of recycling resources.
The Arkansas Energy & Environment Division provides an online search for local electronic waste collection centers across the state.
