In our last article, we discussed the Gaylord base method of monitoring E-Waste. This method tends to be a more invasive process for tracking Covered Electronic Devices (CED). This Gaylord method is particularly useful for tracking serious hazardous materials or for conducting deeper surveillance. However for some Recycling firms, with lesser surveillance needs, E-waste is usually itemized into their respective Covered Electronic Device (CED) categories and shipped accordingly. To understand this further let’s consider an example.

Recycling company A itemizes its CED into four different categories: CRTs, Power supplies, Printers and Circuit boards. Each CED gets shipped separately in 53 foot cargo containers. Each cargo container holds up to 52 Gaylords worth of CEDs depending on weight. Company A send four cargo containers of each itemized CED per month. The company decides to start a tracking program on one channel using the Weekly deployment method to get a sense of the following:

• • Obtain more visibility of CED flows to and through downstream vendor facilities?
• • Timeframe of CED processing?
• • Obtain quantifiable data for Bill Of Material (BOL) and certified downstream flowchart auditing

Recyclers have found it feasible to have at least one tracker in a CED per cargo container a week. As mentioned in the previous article, each portable GPRS tracker plus services for a year can cost from $100 - $300. Scenario analysis:

For the process to be sustainable, one tracker should be attached to a power supply CED in a homogenous cargo container per week. In this scenario, one out of four containers leaving the dock that week will have a tracker inside. This will be a quantity of four trackers per month. The cost of about $800/month, results in an annual investment of approximately $ 9600 per CED channel, for this scenario.

The annual investment for Company A using the Weekly Deployment Base Method will be approximately 2.6 percent of the overall annual revenue. What a small investment compared to the benefits obtained. The benefits include peace of mind of having quantifiable reports to show auditors, marketing case studies to show potential customers and real-time visibility into CED flows. This kind of control is priceless for a recycling business that wants to expand. What if a recycling or refurbishing firm has a large heterogeneous CED pool with many downstream vendors/brokers to manage? What if a governmental and/or non-governmental organization wants to monitor their e-waste flows under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs? How can they enhance their downstream visibility? We will explore this in the next article.