Lexington, KY - Electronic products waste, known as "e-waste," with its huge volume and hazardous nature, poses a daunting challenge for our times. Global Environmental Services (GES), founded in 2008 by Kenny Gravitt, has stepped up to that challenge with a business model that distinguishes it from other recyclers.
At its 70,000-square-foot warehouse in Georgetown, Ky., GES directs millions of pounds of e-waste into reuse and recycling with an environmental responsibility that has earned the company the e-Steward designation by the Switzerland-based Basel Action Network (BAN).
Gravitt, with nearly 40 years of experience in the electronics manufacturing industry, has gained firsthand knowledge of the critical need to change e-waste practices. In 1979, when Gravitt worked in asset recovery for IBM, he travelled with a group of American business leaders from the electronics manufacturing industry to Third World countries in Africa and Asia. They saw where much of America's e-waste was being dumped.
"It was horrible," said Gravitt. "These places looked like wars had been fought there."
He saw water that had turned gray from the leached toxins that washed out of nearby hills of e-waste during rainfall. Dumps smoldered with toxic smoke from plastics and heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury. This was all in the midst of impoverished communities, where children played in the dumping grounds and also worked, haphazardly dismantling electronic products.
"It's not out of sight, out of mind, when I think of my children over there with that stuff or people in my family having to deal with it," said Gravitt. "I wasn't a decision maker, but the corporations that went to look at this stuff all came back and said this has to stop. It was life-changing for me."
Gravitt currently serves on two sub-committees for the Environmental Protection Agency's e-waste program, under the umbrella of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Kentucky has some regulations addressing e-waste, as do others, but Gravitt said a lot of states don't have any regulations on e-waste.
"We're trying to get a collaborative group of stakeholders together to get something mandated across the board throughout all 50 states," said Gravitt.
Holly Ellwood heads the EPA e-waste work, coordinating the work of seven sub-committees studying different facets of the e-waste problem. Gravitt serves on the "TV End of Life" and "Imaging Devices End of Life" sub-committees. Stakeholders engaged in the committees include environmentalists and original manufacturers of equipment (OEMs), along with EPA scientists and policy makers. Gravitt said he thinks that the EPEAT recommendations for legislation will be completed sometime this year.
"I would hope to see, five years from now, 10 years from now," said Gravitt, "that people don't do it out of choice - they do it out of legislation, because destroying other countries and other people's lives by our waste is not acceptable."
Gravitt credited the Basel Action Network (BAN) for the growing global awareness of the issues concerning e-waste dumping. The Basel Convention, founded in 1989, calls for the banning of export and import of e-waste, specifically the shipment of e-waste from developed nations to less developed ones. It has been signed by 173 countries. The United States has signed the treaty but has not ratified it. The movement has created a moral imperative against e-waste dumping in impoverished regions of the world.
Still, said Gravitt, there are those who claim to be e-waste recyclers who simply export the problem. In 2009, 60 Minutes and Frontline aired investigations documenting U.S. recyclers misrepresenting the destination of e-waste they received. Shipments of e-waste went to Hong Kong and then to mainland, rural China ( See media page at gesrecycles.com to view shows.)
Each workday, semis loaded with e-waste arrive at the docks of the cavernous GES warehouse off Cherry Blossom Way in Georgetown. On a walk through the warehouse, Matt Hall, director of operations, explained how they deal with it all. He pointed out an area where workers at eight work stations disassemble products. Another area has eight tech stations for PC and laptop testing, and another includes four stations devoted to printers.
Some units are sent directly to disassembly for recycling. Those products that still have value for refurbishing or usable parts go to the tech stations for evaluation. GES has an outlet E-Bay store and sells locally on Craig's List. Hall said the company ships parts to technicians across the country.
"Something that can be redeployed and reused doesn't need to be ground up or thrown away," said Gravitt, "because then you've got to remanufacture it."
A big issue with e-waste management is data security. In its report on the subject, Frontline discovered information-rich hard-drives in Ghana. One was from a personal home computer once used in California that still held financial information, including credit card numbers, from the former owner. Another hard-drive had sensitive data from a U.S. military contractor.
Cybercrime thrives on this kind of mismanaged data. Hall pointed to a large machine behind a locked gate - a hard-drive shredder that meets Department of Defense specifications. All hard-drives under 40 gigabytes are run through the shredder. The larger hard drives are wiped clean and tested multiple times before returning to market.
Cameras run 24 hours per day and seven days per week, monitoring all of the e-waste that hasn't been processed.
Any movements of equipment are tracked on a spreadsheet. GES's vigilance in data security is critical to clients that include government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, law firms and hospitals.
"We treat every bit of data that comes in here like it was something that comes from national security," said Gravitt. "That is something that really does separate us from other people in this business."
Dell/Goodwill Reconnect, a partnership between Dell and Goodwill Industries, has developed Goodwill centers as drop-off locations for old computers. GES, through a partnership with Dell, is now processing e-waste from Goodwill locations. In the warehouse, which included rows and rows of pallets loaded high in e-waste, one pallet was labeled as 1,359 pounds from Goodwill in Smyrna, Ga.
GES is also vigilant in terms of controlling where all of their recycled material goes. BAN spent six months studying its operations, paperwork and downline before awarding the e-Steward certification. Hall said he knows where every scrap of metal and plastic goes and how it will be reused.
"We go to all these downstream businesses unannounced," said Gravitt. "We follow our loads and make sure (they are) being processed the way (they are) supposed to be."
As a watchdog, BAN not only keeps an eye on GES but also scrutinizes the companies that receive materials from GES. It's all about transparency, in the interest of ensuring that nothing gets exported or ends up in a landfill.
"We took a lot of different niche businesses and made one complete turnkey package, a total solution," said Lindsay Richardson, a manager with GES. The company does it all: pick-up of electronic equipment, data sanitation, parts harvesting, repair or refurbishment, storage and redeployment, consultation for systems efficiency and installations.
The amount of e-waste that GES processes is a drop in the bucket when compared to the totality of e-waste across the country, said Gravitt. And Gravitt quickly corrected himself, saying it was more similar to a drop in the Grand Canyon. The business started two years ago with four people and a white board. GES now employs 54 people, including nine in leadership and
management and the rest trained in operations.
"Do we want to expand this model throughout North America?" Gravitt said. "Yes, we do - one day."