Interview Highlight: Graham Hartley - Electronic Recycling Australia

Published Feb 11, 2025, 12:04 AM

Peter Greco chats with Graham Hartley from Bedford Recycling in SA and employee James about their incredible electronic recycling program. Their programs recycle and re-purpose electronic and electrical waste and to provide employment opportunities for people with disability.

More info: unplug-n-drop

February the 13th is World Radio Day. One of the focuses is the environment climate change. Let's find out some fantastic work that's going on at Bedfords, who have been a great supporter of this program for many years. To speak to the manager for ERA, Graham Hartland. Greg, great to meet you and thanks for your time.

Oh, thanks for having us today, Peter.

And what are your staff? James. James, how are you? Good to meet you, too.

Nice to meet you, too.

And of course, Bedford's actually celebrating 80 years this year, so congratulations to all those involved. Great. Tell us a bit about ERA Electronic Recycling Australia. Who are you and what do you do?

Okay. So Electronic Recycling Australia is one of the Bedford Company groups. Um, what we do is, um, we were initially set up to recycle e-waste. So electronic waste, um, under a federal scheme that's now grown more and more. So we're doing things that are within the federal scheme and also with the scheme, we run a program outside the scheme, which is unplug and drop, which you'll see at Bunnings stores and other stores and locations around where people can drop in their electrical, um, waste items, whether it be a TV vacuum cleaner and so forth, for it to come into our facility to be processed. And when we say process, we reverse manufacture. So we take everything apart and separate it into its commodity values. Okay.

How long have you been around?

He has been around approximately 16 years now. Okay. Um, so quite some time. It started off as a private enterprise, um, in a little shed, and then grew to a larger premises. And initially the business actually started as a refurbishment business where they just refurbished electronics and recycling was a little bit of a side venture. Nowadays we are in a building that is approximately 19,000m², where the electronic recycling occupies about 7000m² of space.

Why aren't you.

In.

Ottawa?

301 Grand Junction Road at Ottawa.

Way. Chase. Chase, how long have you been at Bedford, and how long have you been with the era?

Uh, that's more of a trick question.

Sorry about that.

Because we we. Before we changed our name, we used to be known as Ashby Tech. Okay. But that was back in the years that's gone past. They say grand total 13 years.

Some of the things that you do. What's your kind of role there?

It goes somewhere between, say, it used to be dismantling on the line records to say, making computers to send out to customers or running around to pick up, say stuff from Bunnings locations to empty out the cages. Once upon a time.

How much.

Is James? What are you predominantly doing? It's a little bit more detailed now. Yeah. It's technical.

It's much more technical. Like Ryan said, it's like I have a list of items, but let's just say it's longer than a talk show would go for. Can you give.

Us what are some of the main ones? What are some of the most important ones or the most predominant ones?

Uh, computer replacement robots. Basically what we started off with is AI, we computer in put software, new software, new parts in it, and then we set sail off to the customer at a good price.

Yeah, it'll be a lot cheaper than buying a new one, I'd imagine.

Okay. Because like, depends on what you want. It's like it could be a silly amount at the shops.

And look, other things that James does, which is heaps underselling himself. He's really brilliant. He also does secure data destruction on laptops, mobile phones and big.

Printers that are generally in offices.

And it's like photocopiers in the offices. It's got all of your secure data still sitting on those photocopiers once they get end of life and other things. Now, with the development of IoT, your TV at home has us connected to the internet now, stores your bank details, your passwords, your Netflix accounts, and all your streaming data.

Every single password that you have that's on that TV.

Yay! I'm not sure whether to be scared or happy about the fact that you can get rid of it.

Yeah. Oh, we pride ourselves in being able to ensure that people's data is safe, that it's all been destroyed, and that information is no longer available. And we offer that as a value add service to people.

How busy are you? Because I must admit, I wasn't aware of you doing a lot of this sort of stuff, which is obviously fantastic that we can let the the world know. Are you busy? How do you kind of get the word out there about what you do?

We go the old fashioned route. Actually, how we started off is not getting word of mouth. Yeah.

It's very important, isn't it? Yeah. Look, we'll be starting a major Moore advertising campaign throughout this year. But when you say busy, we've got about 60 people doing dismantling work at the moment. You're kidding. And we need, um, we're in the process of bringing in another 14 to 20 people in to do the work. Because of the amount of volume that we get on an average day, we will probably get up to, I think the busiest day I've seen in the last couple of weeks is, um, 28 tonnes of e-waste come in for the day. Um, a typical week or it ranges between 80 and 130 tonnes a week.

That's amazing, isn't it? Because, you know, I reckon most people want to do the right thing, but we don't know what to do. You know, I'm going to throw out my phone. I'm going to throw out my computer. What do I do with it? You know, you wait for hard rubbish. I mean, I think most people do want to do the right thing. Do you reckon that's true, James?

Some people would like to do the right thing. But like you said.

Where do I start?

Information how to do it.

How long did it take you to learn? Uh, the sort of dismantling stuff and then refurbishing computers. How long it's taking to learn that, James.

So dismantling side. I just had a person next to me telling me what to do. And then, like within, I'd say operating procedures. We just did however you want. However we want to do it, we just pick it up straight away. Or worst cases, we just have someone letting us know how to do it right next to us.

And with the computers that you resell, how do you go about doing that? How do you choose who who can buy it from you?

Um, anyone can buy it from us. We do have them online. Um, we've got a lot of repeat customers and actually a lot of second hand stores or computer stores that come and buy parts off of us or refurbish computers, but anyone can do it. We also started a program in, um, late October, early November of refurbishing items for backpack for kids. So we're supplying them, um, laptops, tablets, mobile phones and calculators for people who are fleeing domestic violence situations.

Uh, what a fabulous idea.

And, um, yeah, the team's been really, really good. We get roughly about, um, 40 to 50 items out every month to them, where they take it straight out to families in need.

Gee, that's a very powerful message, isn't it? I mean, we can only imagine the kind of difference that would make to to someone like that because I was thinking about who can buy computers. Obviously, kids going back to school, there might be families who might be struggling financially if they can get, uh, a good quality refurbished computer at a sort of a good price. That would be very, very appealing as well.

And that's what we're here to do. You know, a lot of our business is not just about recycling. It's about refurbishment, reuse in the circular economy. We've also got some really great initiatives that we're working with, a really good South Australian company as a JV arrangement where we've got some innovative new product that we're going to take the the waste plastic, which has got lots of toxic chemicals in it for TVs and everything like that, and turn it to a high value new building product. And we're currently working on what the patents look like for that, and hopefully we'll get that to market sometime this year.

James, what's it like when you catch up with friends or talk about what you've been doing at work? Uh, you know, this this day, this week? Uh, it must be a very satisfying job that you have. You you're making a real difference.

Uh, that's the thing. They're all in this workplace.

All the friends are here.

But, I mean, you know, you must feel very satisfied with the job that you're doing. I mean, there's enough of us polluting the place. You're trying to clean it up.

Well, to the best degree I can. Even when I say travel off home, I see, say a lot of, say, electronic stuff on the way home and say things like they're not that far from the place. Like they can just drop the damn thing off that.

We're going to expand a lot of our services this year. We're going to make all of our sites available to accept secure destruction services so we can add value, add to our regional communities as well, and also look at how we can get refurbished items out to the regional communities.

Well, you've done a great job telling us about it today. You've certainly informed us with some staggering figures, which is really, really impressive. Over 60 people working there at $28 a day, and the amount of landfill that you're saving is extraordinary. We've got some information regarding the work that you do. We'll put that up on our show notes when we put information up about the show. But if people do have stuff they'd like to, um, well, kind of, uh, declutter. What's the best place that they go to? Bunnings.

Oh, look, they can go to Bunnings. Unfortunately, not all the Bunnings stores offer the service, but if you can't go to Bunnings, we've also have cages here where you can drop off at any time. We also accept, Set polystyrene for recycling as a fee for a fee, and we also recycle mattresses as well for a fee. And we do that for quite a large number of the metropolitan councils. In fact, we're probably around 24,000 mattresses a year of recycled here. And with the majority are components like the foam will be made into underlay for carpets. The scheme failed to go off to be processed into new steel products. The wood will be turned in from the ensemble bases and that into compost. And so the majority of your mattress is also recycled.

Yeah. What's your address?

301 Grand Junction Road, Ottoway.

Terrific. Graham Bartlett, manager for Electronic Recycling Australia and a very valued employee. James, thanks for speaking to us.

Thank you very much. Peter.

James, thank.

You. That's a great message, isn't it? Particularly with the world radio down there. This is on the environment and the ecology, the great work being done there by Bedford's.

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