Covering Recycling On A Daily Basis

This page has been migrated to a document on Free Geek's Google Drive. Information remaining behind may no longer be relevant. MIGRATOR: When you have tagged this page as migrated, please add a link to the new document on Google Drive. (Link to new page immediately below.)

This page or section appears to be out of date or otherwise inaccurate.
Please edit as seems necessary, removing the {{cleanup}} tag when you are through.

Link

Day to Day Requirements

• Volunteers - Many show up at 10 and again at 2, though walk-ins and odd shifts exist on a daily basis. First, ensure that they have safety gloves, glasses and closed-toed shoes. Then Check them out a toolkit. Volunteers on the bench are given "Large" tool kits while those bound for the table receive "small" tool kits. You need to get them started, after a brief explanation of where things go, they can work (for the most part) with little supervision. Get them acquainted with the bins and show or explain how to tear apart a system, or other project.
  • Volunteer projects, including system deconstruction, are documented in the Recycling Handbook.

• As gaylords become full, they will have to be switched out for new ones. Use the pallet jack to move the full bin over to the rows of gaylords waiting to leave. Sweep out the empty space if it needs it (it does). To replace the gaylord first identify whether the final destination of the material is Total Reclaim(T.R.) or Metro Metals as we have separate stacks of gaylords and pallets from each vendor. Place a new pallet on the floor with the slots facing out (so it can be moved with a pallet jack). Take a gaylord from the stack and lug it over by the pallet. Unfold it into box shape and choose an end to be the bottom. Fold the flaps top inward to form the "bottom" and flip it on the pallet. There is a right way to align the gaylord with the pallet; if it seems wide and shallow, you have it on wrong.

Areas of Recycling

Gaylords

Once gaylords fill up and are replaced, they need to be stored in the west end of the warehouse untill we are able to ship them to vendors. Write on the gaylords whats in them, using the list posted on the end of the wall between printers and gaylord country as a guide. There should be 2 rows of full gaylords for Total Reclaim on the right(west) side. The middle-left column is for Metro Metals. The far left(east) column of gaylords is for Hallmark (Circuit boards), and is often used as temporary storage of other palletized loads.

Monitor stacking tips: When stacking monitor into a gaylord, PLEASE, set them in Tetris-style, which means optimizing the space. Usually, 3 levels of 5 to 6 monitors will fit in a gaylord. They can be set on their base, top or side, NEVER with the glass facing down or up. The lid still needs to close, rather have fewer monitors in there than overload. This is generally a job for receiving staff and volunteers. Also, please not that I-macs and other system/CTR combinations are tallied separately, please ensure that these are always only on the top level and/or note the existence of buried all-in-one systems on the outside of the gaylord.

The Bench

Almost every tool needed to de-manufacture a computer will be given to each volunteer in a toolbox. This box has a list of tools and needs to be turned in complete to staff at the end of the volunteer's shift. Gloves, dust masks, and safety glasses can be found next to the tool check in/out desk and should always be pointed out to volunteers. Work gloves, some form of eye protection, and Closed-Toed shoes are always required when working in the warehouse. There also is a small first aid kit. Tell the volunteers that if they run across something you didn't cover, run into a problem or forget where stuff goes, just set it aside and ask you the next time they see you, and then make sure they see you often enough for this to work. If you also cannot deal with it, place it in a box for someone to deal with later.

Special materials

Even when following the Recycling Handbook closely there will often be unexpected materials.

• Aluminum - Aluminum can be identified with a magnet; it is metal that will not stick at all. This qualification may confuse it with stainless, but aluminum is rarely used as thin or shiny, it is usually colored and thick. Quite often there will be some kind of steel apparatus to hold a heat sink to a motherboard, this should be removed and placed in the small steel bin. Fans are also embedded in heat sinks and should be removed and placed with the fans. This work gets done by a trained person in Advanced Recycling.

• Hard Drives - In general, we shouldn't see hard drives in the systems. They should have been removed in Evaluation. But since we do find them, they should be given to a staff member or taken back to Evaluation. You might have to point out the obvious difference between hard drives and other drives; hard drives have no door to allow things to be put inside. You may need to explain this many times if hard drives keep showing up in the drive bin.

• Batteries - These toxic nastys are to be gathered and sorted into bins on the bottom shelf of warehouse volunteer check in desk:

1. rechargeable (Ni-Cd) (Ni-MH) (Li-Ion) (Ni-Zn)
2. alkaline
3. lithium
4. Button cells.

Due to leakage of batteries latex gloves should be worn during the process of sorting .

Slow Fill Gaylords/Barrels

Aluminum, circuit boards, hard drive chassis and many other sorted bins exist. Only trained advanced recyclers should be putting stuff in them! The barrels against the western wall are for different metals like extruded/cast/sheet aluminum, and stainless steel. The lids will tell you what goes in them. However, only trained advanced recyclers should be putting stuff in them. Mistakes will cost Free Geek precious monetary resources, or time in resorting them.