Dive Brief:
- Ohio-based Regency Technologies has closed a CRT dismantling facility in Upper Sandusky, OH due in part to a reduction in supply from Best Buy, as reported by Resource Recycling.
- Once Best Buy started charging for electronics recycling earlier this year the amount of CRT units they received at stores dropped. Regency had partnered with Dlubak Glass for disposal of the CRT glass separated from units.
- Though the Upper Sandusky facility has been cleared of materials since July, Regency opened two new facilities this year. One is an R2-certified processing site near Tampa, FL and the other is a new facility in Huntsville, AL which is scheduled for an R2 audit this fall.
Dive Insight:
Regency was founded in 1998 and now has six operational facilities — in Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Illinois and Alabama — which employ more than 100 workers. The company says it recycles more than 50 million pounds of electronic scrap per year.
While the partnership with Dlubak Glass was seen as unique and mutually beneficial, Regency's vice president told Resource Recycling "the less CRT glass we get in, the better we like it." For companies that don't have this kind of partnership it can be even harder to make the economics of CRT recycling work and many programs have struggled to process the units.
As U.S. residents slowly begin to drop off their old TVs and other CRT units the backlog of material seems to have decreased in some states. Washington and California have both seen CRT volumes drop in recent years, though the supply in North Carolina and other states has remained more steady. The EPA has been working with recyclers to develop more markets for the material which can be used to make certain industrial products.
