By JOHN HANC


Tons of hard drives, printers, fax machines and cellphones move along a conveyor belt every hour into the gaping maw of a shredder at e-Scrap Destruction, in Islandia, New York.

The machine’s steel blades noisily chew through the components, reducing them to shards no more than 10 centimeters long. The shredded material goes back on the belt, where an overhead electromagnet removes material containing iron as the waste moves along.

This detritus of the digital age spells profit for Trace Feinstein, who founded e- Scrap Destruction two years ago.

“I saw computer recycling as the next big wave,’’said Mr.Feinstein, 37, who previously ran a paper-shredding business with his father, Bob.“We did some research and found that not too many companies were doing it the right way.’’

Finding ways to dispose of America’s increasingly large stream of e-waste is difficult: an estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses every day. In a 2006 report, the International Association of Electronics Recyclers estimated that about 400 million pieces of e-waste are scrapped each year.“It’s a huge problem, and it’s growing,’’said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the San Francisco-based Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a group that promotes recycling of consumer electronics.“Think about how many gadgets you have now and didn’t have five years ago. We’re buying more and more things with shorter and shorter life spans.’’

Many recycling companies, Mr.Feinstein said,“dismantle the equipment by hand, ship it overseas, sell it on eBay.’’Anything with no value - for instance, the glass on computer monitors - often ends up in a landfill. He and his father, the vice president of e-Scrap, decided that they wanted to handle the scrap more responsibly.

First, though, they had to show clients they could dispose of e-trash thoroughly to assuage customers’ privacy concerns - a crucial selling point. Enter the shredder: Mr.Feinstein hired Allegheny Paper Shredders in Delmont, Pennsylvania, a company he knew from his work in paper shredding, to build a machine capable of demolishing electronic components, for about $500,000.

“No way you can rescue any data from this,’’Mr.Feinstein said, poking with a shovel at some shredded material.

From e-Scrap, the material is sent to MaSeR (Materials Selection and Recycling), a business in Barrie, Ontario, near Toronto, where it is reduced to base materials - glass, plastic, copper and steel - that are then sold.“We have a zero landfill policy,’’Mr.Feinstein said,“and so do all our vendors.’’

At the end of the shredding process, the e-scrap is shipped in storage containers to the refinery in Canada, where it is ground and pulverized into its very low-tech, base components. This material is then sold to companies that use it in other products.

Mr.Feinstein said his company’s revenues had increased 40 percent annually in each of the last two years, to about $1.4 million.

E-Scrap’s staff has grown to 10 from 6 the year before.“We’re going to have to hire more people, more equipment,’’Mr.Feinstein said.“Absolutely, I’m going to be working longer hours.’’


Old computers and other gadgets are pulverized and their base components resold by e-Scrap Destruction./PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAXINE HICKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES