Covering Recycling On A Daily Basis

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Day to Day Requirements

• Volunteers - Many show up at 11 and again at 3, though walk-ins and odd shifts exist on a daily basis. 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.

• Also make sure the first batch of monitors for burn-in is set up (this should happen before Free geek opens) and try to find a monitor tester, since we no longer have sponsored interns coming in to handle this task on a predictable basis. While monitor testing is not strictly a recycling task, it is in the recycling coordinator's best interest to have monitors cycling through the warehouse quickly and efficiently. Try to get testers to stack monitors for recycling into gaylords as they go.

• 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) and place a new pallet on the floor with the slots facing out (so it can be moved when it, in turn, is full). 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 inward to form the bottom and place 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

Warehouse Organization

Once bins fill up and are replaced, they should be placed in designated areas to reduce the work involved in taking inventory and getting shipments out the door. Right now, items are sorted by vendor; once you are familiar with PDX Recycling Vendors and what they take, it should be fairly easy to remember. As you stand behind the recycling bench, facing south, you should see five rows of gaylords.

• The first row from the left, single stacked, consists of open gaylords of keyboards, CBM and monitors. These should be swapped out as soon as they are full. Though it is almost inevitable that monitors tend to stack up in front of gaylords, try not to let this happen, as it will slow down your workflow and bins will overflow like crazy while you try to find a new place for the monitors.
• The second row from the left should contain double-stacked gaylords of plastics. Once you have six full gaylords, it's time to call E-Recycling.
• The next two rows contain double-stacked gaylords of CBM, keyboards, wires, cords, motors, floppy drives, circuitboards, hard drives and everything else that Calbag buys from us.
• The final row -- the one nearest the wall by the black hole - contains monitor overflow. These should be double-stacked. However, monitors are often stacked quite poorly, so inspect gaylords carefully before stacking them and make sure volunteers are well-educated in the fine art of monitor tetris. Keeping two or three open monitor gaylords open at a time can also aid in efficient packing.

The Bench

Almost every tool needed to de-manufacture a computer and many that are not can be found scattered the length of the bench. Power screwdrivers are hardwired to the bench with fixed Phillips head bits. Screws have many containers that collect screws as well as containers for batteries. Gloves can be found on the shelves below and at the end of the bench closest to the Mad Max cart is a 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.

Pre-Op Bins Behind The Bench

• Daughter Boards - All ISA, PCI, AGP and other daughter boards that come to recycling are to start off here. People coming from testing, card and motherboard sorting, or build with boxes full of these things are to be told to put them here.

• Small Steel - Small steel pieces such as the faceplates from daughter boards and numerous other forms are easier to dump into the bin than standing on your head in the mad max cart to gather a thousand little pieces and throw handfuls of them into the air.

• Stainless steel - Inside of computers, one runs across a lot of shiny thin metal. Some of it is stainless steel; most of it is just steel. Only a magnet knows for sure. Magnets are affixed to the waist-height edge of the workbench in several places. If the shiny metal is held to the magnet after you let go, it is steel, and should be placed in the Mad Max cart or the small steel, depending on its size. If it slides off the magnet or will barely stick at all, it is stainless and should be placed in the box.

• Aluminum - A plastic tub. This is the place for aluminum which is mostly encountered as heat sinks from on top of processors. 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.

• Fans - This cardboard barrel is for any fans that are found inside the computers. It is not necessary nor is it recommended that volunteers open up power supplies to remove those fans.

• Speakers - Most computers have a naked speaker inside of them, this cardboard barrel is where they go.

• Hard Drives - This cardboard barrel is for the hard drives (which are frequently mistaken for floppy drives). You should point out the obvious difference between them; 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 motor bin. Floppy drives should be removed from this barrel and placed in the motor bin while or before emptying this barrel into the gaylord of hard drives out on the warehouse floor.

• Batteries- These toxic nastys are to be gathered and sorted into two categories:

1. rechargeable
2. not rechargeable

and then the nonrechargeable are sorted into

1. alkaline
2. NiCad
3. lithium
4. Button cells.

Once they are sorted they are to be sealed in 5 gallon buckets and labeled properly.Once the buckets are labeled they can live by the stack of broken down gaylord boxes.Due to leakage of batteries latex gloves should be worn during this process .