EISA Green Awards
The environment is important for EISA, therefore EISA introduced the Green Awards back in 2005.
EISA’s first Green Award went to a conventional, bulky analogue television, but today those heavy carcasses are only available in second hand stores. Flat is now common and although a few years back, there was a serious attempt to shelter Plasma and LCD under the same umbrella; the winner ultimately always came from the LCD corner. Determining the winner is, by the way, not something EISA does by itself.
EISA member-magazines may know a lot about technology and its applications but on environmental
issues they generally lack the necessary knowledge to make the right decision. Therefore, on the Norwegian side, the work is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Casper Boks, professor at the University of Science & Technology in Trondheim, on the German side by Dr. ir Jaco Huisman of the United Nations University in Bonn and on the Dutch side by Prof. dr. ir. Jo Geraedts and dr. ir. Renee Wever of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. Worldwide, these gentlemen are recognized as real specialists in green.
Sims Recycling Solutions
Because participating universities do not have the ability to analyse all materials used in mobile phones, they work in close cooperation with Sims Recycling Solutions in Eindhoven, to determine the winner of EISA’s Green Mobile Phone.
Sims Recycling Solutions, formerly Mirec in Eindhoven recycles 60,000 tons of electronic waste annually, a third of which is in the form of monitors and televisions, and plays a leading role in re-use of components such as computers or telephone equipment that is not at the end of its life cycle.
The most efficient process within the company is an automated machine, which is able to recover almost 100% of metal and glass from a conveyor full of TV’s and monitors. The recycled glass is so clean that it is re-usable for new televisions. Also, plastic recycling is becoming more sophisticated achieving levels of almost 85%. Besides material recovery, enormous energy savings are achieved.
In relation to the energy necessary to recover metals, savings of about 60% are achieved in recycled zinc and lead, 62-74% savings in steel, 85% in copper and up to 95% in aluminium. Sims Recycling Solutions has a collection system for consumers, manufacturers and professional users.
Accuracy in product registration is required to retrieve useful information for the professional provider. Next to good cooperation with customs and high-level security, Sims Recycling Solutions offers anti-static storage for re-usable components. Over the years, recycling has become more complex, with a lot of smaller products such as mobile phones and MP3 players containing built-in batteries which are often hidden. These need to be located and removed to prevent contamination and possible explosion during the recycling process. Sims actively tries to collect production blueprints for such devices and is able to advise manufacturers on how to make products more environmentally friendly and easy to recycle before production.
