User:Jashcraft

How to Identify John Ashcraft

John Ashcraft!

Formerly known as John the Recycling Intern.

I am currently Free Geek's Warehouse_support Staff.

Also known as "That guy who brings in bags of banannas".

ToDo List

Make todo list

Training I Need

First aid / CPR training.

• (This is supposedly being planned soon - as of April 2011)
• I have read : Injury_Logging_Procedure and Safety.

Forklift Operation.

• I have read the manual and have begun training with Cliff.
• I have double stacked gaylords, loaded the FG truck for hallmark and done some agility training in the parking lot. I am slow but careful, and need plenty of practice. I feel like i could load metro metals if needed but would be apprehensive about total reclaim.(5-11-2011)

How To Run Printer Island - Printers.

• I have a good concept of printer triage and volunteer expectations. I understand that toner, glass and bulbs should be kept away from volunteers. I believe that I could run a shift in printer-land when needed.

Research printer reuse procedures and options. - started 3/25/11

• I have tested a few printers and scanners. I am interested in learning to work with the bulk buyer. I would like to become more proficient at testing/reuse.

Questions John is Pondering

Plastic to oil technology.

• Screws and springs are only potentially an issue for the shredding machinery perhaps we will be able to ship out audio cassettes and more intricate media once the data security has been achieved.

Robots will make human labor obsolete. - Someday mechanical separation of plastic, steel, aluminum, copper and possibly even circuit boards will meet or exceed environmental concerns about materials reclamation.

• Has this occurred and we just don't know about it?
• I assume that the plastic that enters the CBM shredder is degraded to a quality below E-plastic. Is it actually less reusable than Junk-plastic? If so will it still be true when Plastic-to-oil technology becomes available.
• Perhaps stripping aluminum drives has no environmental benefit. If so, is there sufficient economic incentive?

Is there a better way to manage dust in the warehouse?

• I imagine a weekly vacuuming of the warehouse floors and tabletops with a powerful shop-vac that has a filter that is appropriate for toner. Sweeping makes fine particles airborne and doesn't get into the cracks. When something is dropped on the floor or bench small clouds of dust form.
• An appropriate vacuum would need the capacity to handle screws, zipties and other scraps.
• Research added to: Toner Clean-up indicates that Electrostatic discharge-safe (ESD-safe) vacuums are necessary for toner spills (to prevent fire) and a HEPA filter would be necessary to keep Toner from becoming airborne.

What is needed to make printer island awesome again.

• Volunteer printer testers.
• Organize ink/toner storage.
• Financial justification: Value of GBM, value of (printer scrap $x/lb plus eplastic $0/lb) vs whole printers ?/lb), and value of printer sales.
• Mission based justification: Grants, Reuse, volunteer oppertunity, "doing our best". (It would be hard to justify taking apart audio cassettes but not printers.)

Current Projects

Alkaline Battery Reuse.

• We have some cheap battery testers that indicate good/bad. Tony put some "good" ones in a digital camera and it displayed a message to replace the batteries. Tony does not want to sell batteries like this.
• Fancy electronics are sensitive to fully charged batteries. Bike lights are not. I believe there may be some market for these batteries but at the moment this project is stalled and low priority. 5/31/2011

Dust control

• I am researching vacuum cleaner options. We could get a $100 shopvac with $30 hepa filters (no prefilter) and dump the dust/screws into cbm.
  • We could get a $700 vacuum designed for lead cleanup (filter bags $44/10). The fancy lead vacuum would not be serviceable at stark vacuums. It would have an optional collection bag that is disposable or can be treated as hazardous if full of lead. without the collection bag it can be used as a shopvac 2ith multiple filtration stages. (pick up screws and cbm.

• • We could just get $30 hepa filters for the shopvacc in the janitor's closet. Anything seems better than sweeping and this would be an easy way to test things.

Cleaning safety glasses

• I have purchased microfiber cloths from costco ($0.50 each) that last about 2 weeks before they get greasy and dusty. Every morning, I shake the glasses in a small tub of hot water and then wipe them clean. This seems to work very well and volunteers comment about the nice glasses. Each morning the glasses are mostly filthy again, some are very bad. It might be worth checking midday and separating any that are very dirty.

Glove sharing safety

• Cliff set up a "used glove" bin and we have been airing them out nightly on the recycling table. This seems to reduce smell and moisture. Ideally no one is wearing gloves that have been used in the last 16 hours.

Interesting "Facts" to Remember

• Lithium batteries all need to be taped if they are going to be shipped anywhere. This includes button batteries. Taking them anywhere other than Metro hazardous would require labor.

• A H.E.P.A filter should catch toner. Some vacuums labeled hepa allow some air to leak past the filter. to vaccume large toner spills an Electrostatic discharge-safe vacuum is required to prevent explosion.