We are hugely appreciative of our team of volunteers, some of whom have been with us since we first started. This week we profile one of our long-standing volunteers ‒ Murray Glensor ‒ who talks about being a volunteer with Urban Miners and the not-so-gentle art of processing e-waste!
“We’ve all got e-waste” says Murray “We all use electrical things that are eventually going to stop working one day, and how do you dispose of them? Up until 2 or 3 years ago, we all just put them in our rubbish.”
“We all use electrical things that are eventually going to stop working one day, and how do you dispose of them? Up until 2 or 3 years ago, we all just put them in our rubbish.”
Curiosity about e-waste and what happens to it led Murray to join Urban Miners as a volunteer. He is a regular at the Urban Miners e-waste processing days in Leamington.
“We call it processing, but really we dismantle things and box up the various components. I’m not an expert at it. It’s not my background, but you just start by pulling out as many screws and bolts as you can. For most things you just take off the outer case to get into the goodies….”
The ‘goodies’ are the reusable components in e-waste, such as metals, hard drives, circuit boards, and batteries, which are retrieved through dismantling and then recycled in full. Urban Miners take care of initial processing and grading, before sending the processed materials on to specialist processing partners for full recycling. This is a key step to minimizing the volume of e-waste going to landfill in our region.
Looking back over the last couple of year since Urban Miners started, Murray observes “During these sessions we have changed what we dismantle. We were processing small amounts early on, but now we are dismantling substantially more.”
“It’s a learning thing. The people we work with are tremendous. Everyone willingly gives their time, turns up here and helps out. It’s a good bunch of people to be with.”
