ODATE, JP -- Many small pieces can add up to a big whole, and one small city in
the north of Japan is finding there's money in the process as
well.
Odate, a city of about 80,000 people in Akita Prefecture, on the
northern end of Honshu, the big island of Japan, has begun diverting small
electronics from landfills and using the town's mining history to salvage
precious metals from the waste.
By putting collection bins outside
supermarkets and community centers, the city gathering about 17 tons of e-waste
in 11 months, from April 2007 to February 2008, according to a
report from Harufumi Mori
in Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The gadgets collected range from broken appliances to hair dryers to cell phones
-- all too small to fall under the scope of recycling laws in
Japan.
Although they're small, they're far from worthless, the city is
finding. After looking through just over one-third of the waste, Mori reports
that the city might find as much as half a kilogram of tantalum, one kilogram of
gold, and as much as 4 kilograms of silver and palladium. All from less than one
year of collections in one city among a gadget-crazy country with over 127
million residents.
As a former mining town, Odate is well equipped to
harvest precious metals from e-waste.
The 11 workers at Goodwill are part of a 10-week program designed to train workers for entry-level jobs in recycling what is known as electronic waste, or e-waste. The program, which began in July, trains low-skilled or displaced workers in disassembling electronics and separating the elements inside, sometimes called "de-manufacturing."