NATCHEZ, Mississippi, February 7, 2008 (ENS) - Dennie Eugene Pridemore had been paid to take millions of pounds of hazardous waste containing the toxic heavy metals cadmium, chromium and lead and recycle it into marketable products at his facility in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

But instead he buried the wastes in trenches and produced products that leached heavy metals into the surrounding soil and groundwater, Pridemore admitted in court.

Today, he was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Natchez to 41 months in prison and three years probation for illegally storing and disposing hazardous waste.

Pridemore pleaded guilty on November 15, 2007 to a six-count federal indictment charging him with operating a sham hazardous waste recycling facility under the name Hydromex, Inc., in Yazoo City.

He admitted illegally storing and disposing of hazardous waste at the Yazoo City site, and making false statements to state and federal regulatory officials and investigators in an effort to conceal his illegal disposal of the waste.

Federal prosecutors alleged that the products produced at the Hydromex plant were useless and made only to create the illusion that the company was legitimately recycling hazardous waste in accordance with federal and state environmental laws.

In a further effort to conceal his failure to properly recycle hazardous waste, Pridemore created false documents making it appear to regulators that he had customers for the products he claimed to be making and selling, they alleged.

“The defendant attempted to deceive regulators into believing that he was legitimately and safely recycling hazardous waste into useful products when, in fact, he was illegally disposing of the waste and contaminating the environment,” said Ronald Tenpas, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

“The defendant’s conviction illustrates how deceit and concealment often accompany environmental violations,” Tenpas observed.

View This Story On Eco-mmunity Map.

Green innovation is steadily spreading throughout all types of industries. Even the companies that make the silicon chips that are probably running your computer have started to adapt commercially efficient manufacturing processes.

For example, the director of corporate responsibility at Intel, Dave Stangis said, “We started with a green blueprint and designed in waste recycling, energy efficiency, water reuse and ways to take advantage of the sunlight.” According to Stangis, the giant chip company has spent $23 million doing green renovations on their factories and have saved $38 million as a result of these green investments.

IBM is joining Intel in the march towards green by repurposing old semiconductor wafers with a cheap and safe process that cleans the silicon wafers for use in solar panels. Solar companies are very interested in buying silicon wafers as they are expensive and energy intensive to produce. IBM can afford to sell them competitively because the wafers themselves are a byproduct of their primary chip business.

Ultimately, this is another reason to feel good about using your computer. Computers save time and money in many ways, cutting down on transportation, packaging and allowing people to be more productive with their time. Now that the components of a computer are being produced more efficiently and less wastefully, the good feeling you get when you click on your favorite Mac or PC can become even stronger.

Electronic waste, known as e-waste, or even as “Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment” (”WEEE”) to some, is a big, big problem. Generally consisting of any broken or unwanted electrical or electronic appliance — computers and peripherals, TVs, cell phones and the like are the most widely known — it is worrisome because many components of such equipment are toxic to the planet and any humans that come in contact with it. Before we can solve the problem, though, we have to define it.

WEEE: Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment; is also a set of directives on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. See also WEEE Man [www.weeeman.org] (pictured above).

RoHS: Restriction of Hazardous Substances; which restricts the use of six hazardous materials — lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDEs) — in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment and together with WEEE, sets collection, recycling and recovery targets for all types of electrical goods. Both RoHS and WEEE are only enforced in the EU.

PBBs: polybrominated biphenels and PBDEs: polybrominated diphenyl ether: flame retardants used in some plastics found in common electronics.
EWRA: Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003; law passed by California that prohibits the sale of electronic devices after January 1, 2007, that are prohibited from being sold under the EU RoHS directive, but across a much narrower scope that includes LCDs, CRTs, and the like and only covers the four heavy metals restricted by RoHS. EWRA also has a restricted material disclosure requirement. Other US states and cities are debating whether to adopt similar laws, and there are several states that have mercury and PBDE bans already. Unfortunately, federal RoHS-like regulation in the US is unlikely in the near to medium term.

Given this collection of acronyms, what does it really mean? While there is no generally accepted definition of electronic waste, in most cases electronic waste consists of electronic products that were used for data processing, telecommunications, or entertainment in individual homes and businesses that are now considered obsolete, broken, or irreparable. Despite its common classification as a waste, disposed electronics have considerable potential as a resource, due to their suitability for direct, immediate reuse — for example, many fully functional computers and components are discarded during upgrades — or refurbishing and material recycling of its raw materials. As such, reconceptualization of electronic waste as a resource thus has potential to preempt its potentially hazardous qualities, when done responsibly and correctly. Stay tuned for the rest of the week learn more about how proper e-waste recycling makes a difference.