[ale] Off Topic, hard drive shredder

[Lightner, Jeff]

That’s been discussed here before at length.

Synopsis of previous discussion:
CFLs (fluorescent “bulb” replacements) can be taken to Home Depot and others.

Fluorescent tubes aren’t officially accepted by Home Depot and others but some have gotten away with taking them there.

There are places you can send your tubes but as you noted handling isn’t simple.






________________________________
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Charles Shapiro
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 3:03 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Off Topic, hard drive shredder

Argh.  I realize all too well that flourescents are hazardous waste. The problemo is that there is no simple way for a private individual to get rid of them legally.

-- CHS

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:42 AM, planas <jslozier at gmail.com<mailto:jslozier at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi


On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 09:35 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:

On 8/5/11 12:47 AM, Sparr wrote:

> I've recently come into possession of a large security disintegrator,

> designed for shredding things like hard drives and tapes and such. I'm

> trying to figure out what to do with it. Selling it is, of course, an

> option, but I was thinking of possibly starting up a small security

> business to destroy hard drives for people. Is there a market for that

> in Atlanta?

It would make a big difference if your apparatus of mindless destruction

were mobile.  But you are going to have a waste stream like nobody's

business; some of that will be leaded solder, which is toxic.  One thing

you could certainly do without too much difficulty would be to separate

out the ground-up magnets; run the refuse past a piece of iron that gets

scraped off periodically.  I don't know what all the composition of disk

drive magnets would be in the field - I'd suspect samarium cobalt and

neodymium.  What you recover could potentially be press-formed into

fairly decent magnets, suitable for electricity generation, but as far

as actually separating out the metals into bulk material with a net

positive value, I dunno.



Possessing this device only makes sense if it's actively being used, so,

congratulations on having entered the waste processing business! :)

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Once you grind up the hard drive you could attempt to recover the metals present using a combination of physical and chemical methods. The metals should be a reasonable purity to sell .

If limited metal recovery is done you probably will have D- series (unless the EPA has a specific classification) hazardous waste. I do not know the current prices for hazardous waste disposal. But when I was handling waste disposal I found there was roughly a 10x difference between the charges of non-hazardous waste and a hazardous waste.

Off topic stupidity, most people do not realize that fluorescent lights should be disposed as a hazardous waste - mercury is the culprit.
--
Jay Lozier
jslozier at gmail.com<mailto:jslozier at gmail.com>


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