Dublin’s e-waste generates jobs

Nonprofit recycler hires people with disabilities

Possitivity employee Mike Cotton takes apart a DVD player and sorts its parts by the type of material for recycling. Cotton, 39, has worked for the nonprofit company for two years. “You have to keep moving as fast as you can and keep going,” he said. “I never get bored.”

By Holly Zachariah

The Columbus Dispatch | Tuesday February 7, 2012 5:34 AM

As he ripped apart an old computer server’s battery-backup system, Mike Cotton summed up why he does what he what does.

“We mine the planet to get the stuff to make these electronics, so why shouldn’t we recycle them and use that material again?”

That’s exactly the thinking of his bosses, the people who run Possitivity. It also is why Dublin officials wanted to keep more electronic waste out of landfills. So the Dublin-based company and the city recently reached an agreement to make such recycling easier for Dublin residents.

Possitivity, an e-waste recycler that also has a warehouse on Westbelt Drive on Columbus’ Far West Side, has placed bins in the Dublin Service Center so residents can drop off old gadgets free. The company will take things such as computers, cellphones, power cords, printers, fax machines, telephones, microwaves, clocks and radios — even typewriters. Televisions and computer monitors are not accepted, however.

The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio lists six private businesses or organizations where people can drop off e-waste locally, but Dublin officials say they are the first in the area to provide the opportunity on city property.

“People want things to be easy,” said Michelle Crandall, the city’s director of administrative services. “We want to keep people from putting this stuff out with their trash.”

She said the mission of Possitivity made the partnership, which costs the city nothing, an obvious choice. It’s a nonprofit company that hires only people with disabilities.

“What they do there is pretty incredible, and we wanted to see how we could help one another,” Crandall said.

This year, Possitivity expects to process 200 tons of electronic waste. Since the bins were placed at the Dublin Service Center a month ago, residents have dropped off 4,467 pounds of electronics. That nearly equaled what Possitivity used to get from the city in a year during one annual collection event, said Jesse Roberts, Possitivity’s e-waste manager.

Once the materials get to the Westbelt Drive warehouse, five employees dismantle them using hammers, pliers and drills and protecting themselves with safety glasses and heavy gloves. The plastic, copper, aluminum, other metals, wiring and computer boards are all stripped and tossed into separate bins. Eventually, that’s all hauled away to other businesses that smelt it, shred it or do whatever needs to be done to allow reuse.

Cotton, a 39-year-old from Marysville, has held his job for about two years. He said it is fun to be paid for such destruction.

“You have to keep moving as fast as you can and keep going,” he said. “I never get bored.”

The items waiting to be tackled last week included a remote-control race car, an outdated Samsung multi-jet printer and a microwave that seemed only slightly smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle.

Dublin and Upper Arlington schools use Possitivity as a training ground for students with disabilities.

Five permanent employees work at the warehouse, and Roberts hopes to double that within a year. The employees are generally referred from programs run by county boards of developmental disabilities in the area, and they all earn between $8 and $8.50 an hour.

The schedules are flexible, based on each person’s ability, Roberts said. “If someone wants to work two afternoons a week, that’s great. But when they are here those two afternoons, they have to be productive.

“That’s why I love this. It’s a real job, with real pay, and we’re all in it as one. It’s not the bosses at the headquarters in Dublin and ‘the others’ at the warehouse. If Possitivity has a Christmas party, we all have a Christmas party. If a few of us have pizza, we all have pizza.”

And that’s just fine with Cotton: “I love this job.”

Click here to read the story on The Columbus Dispatch website.