Brian,
As you've done many times before, you have provided very interesting information. Thank you! The process you've described for recycling circuit card assemblies to recover solder sounds very clever. I'd like to learn more: from what you posted, it appears that it was developed by an entrepreneur, not, say, a university professor or an evironmental activist. What more can you share?
You have said that the process is cost-effective. I take that to mean that the value of the recovered solder is sufficient to cover the costs of collection, the process itself, disposal of what's left, with enough extra to provide an adequate profit. (I'd say it has a better chance of economic success than attempting to make a profit selling glass from recycled CRTs, where the competition is sand and lead.) If that is really so, then the company that owns the process ought to be advertising for discarded electronic assemblies, and looking for franchisees - around the world.
Let's get the word out to the capitals where mandatory (subsidized) recycling is being considered, that they can drop their efforts, since self-sustaining recycling of electronic products is coming. Let's encourage the legislators to reverse themselves on prohibiting lead in electronics, to support the economics. (Of course, there will continue to be a market for tin-lead solder, even with the RoHS directive keeping it out of many types of electronic products, so even without this support it shouldn't be necessary to separate the two metals.)
As you know, my objection is not to recycling but to coercion, where the benefit of the mandated activity (or the harm from the prohibited activity) has never been weighed, openly and rigorously, against the associated costs. (Part of my objection to the superficially appealing but pernicious precautionary principle is that it was adopted by legislators and others as a basis for making important decisions without itself receiving public scrutiny and debate.) I'm all for recycling automobiles, and as long as people aren't forced to pay for it, anything else, including electronic products. It bothers me, too, to see the entropy increase of potentially salvageable items being destroyed, but it doesn't bother me as much as being told that I have to pay to salvage them (a greater entropy increase), without some substantial and documented benefit. More power to the enterprise willing to take
unwanted items and extract value from them.
I'm glad that you say you agree with me in part, but which half is it that you don't agree with me on?
Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
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410-993-7399
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