The transition from one year to the next often is recognized as a busy time, but one local business owner has a unique perspective on the bustling of the holiday season and what it brings.
Dan Tharp owns and operates Ecycle Northwest, an electronic waste recycling service located just east of Sequim.
“We were going to close on Black Friday, but we ended up opening the gate and worked Saturday, too, because of Black Friday,” Tharp said.
Since the 1930s, throughout the country the day after Thanksgiving increasingly has developed as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Most major retailers and occasionally some small businesses are open during all hours of the night, offering a variety of promotional sales that ring in multi-billion dollars in sales nationwide.
“It’s crazy, but it’s that desire to want,” Tharp said.
Beginning on Black Friday and the days following, Tharp and longtime employee Cory Maley see many electronics come in to be recycled as people replace the old with the new.
“I’ve already pulled a nice Pioneer surround sound system and set it aside,” Maley said. “We’re also seeing a lot of working flat screens.”
Though the amount of electronics coming to Ecycle Northwest is notable during the holidays, Tharp and Maley handle a consistent flow of goods throughout the year. Tharp estimates they get about a dozen flat screens per week.
“And that’s only a small percent of what’s out here,” he said.
Before allocating electronics for recycling, Tharp and Maley test them to see if they work. If so, they can sell them to resellers.
A ‘first-hand’ take on recyclables, garbage
Tharp moved to the peninsula 15 years ago on his motorcycle and it didn’t take long before he saw a need for something like Ecycle Northwest, which he founded in 2007. Tharp spent much of his career building the infrastructure needed for recycling and deposing of material, he said. He helped construct landfills and transfer stations. The Regional Transfer Station in Port Angeles was the last station Tharp helped build.
Having first-hand experience working in and around transfer stations and landfills gave him insight into the amount of garbage and recyclables produced.
“It doesn’t make sense how we handle our things when we’re done with them,” he said, noting a distinct memory he has of watching dozens of new televisions get dumped into the landfill because of the transition to flat screens.
“I do this because I think this should be happening in every community,” Tharp said. “The average person doesn’t seem to have an awareness of their stuff when they’re done using it.”
Throughout the years, Ecycle Northwest has continued to evolve and diversify. Tharp also takes in scrap metal, appliances and bales plastic and cardboard.
Multiple times per week Tharp and Maley truck large quantities of recyclables off the Olympic Peninsula, equating to about two semi-truck loads per month, Tharp said. The majority of scrap metal and some electronics are taken to a recycling center in Tacoma and electronics with screens larger than 4-inches are taken to a state designated processor.
“We try hard to keep things local,” Tharp said.
Despite the amount of recyclables distributed through Ecycle Northwest, the volume needed to make recycling economically viable isn’t here given labor costs and the “terrible” commodity prices right now, Tharp said. To help offset the costs associated with recycling, Tharp devotes about half his time toward consulting for large salvage and insurance companies on how to recycle and properly dispose of material.
“About 40 percent of my job is figuring out what to do with stuff,” he said.
The “curious kid” in Tharp also keeps him in the recycling industry.
“Even of the dourest days, there’s something I have stashed away that I can pull out and try to figure out how it works,” he said.
Maley shares Tharp’s sense of curiosity and together they live for the “shock and the ring of the phone,” Tharp said.
“You never know what it might be or what someone has,” he said.
Consultant and salvage jobs have ranged from dealing with damaged high rise buildings to sunken dry docks.
“I just started here driving truck, but it’s been interesting enough to keep me around,” Maley said.
Despite the perks of working in the recycling industry such as, at times the shock factor or the fact that Maley has never purchased a computer given all the fully functional computers sent for recycling, Tharp and Maley don’t necessarily like all the stuff that comes to Ecycle Northwest.
Instead, they could be considered somewhat “old school,” Tharp explained, in that they both prefer to listen to music on older audio systems simply because “it sounds better” and neither watch a lot of television nor care much for their cell phones.
Reflecting on the overall cultural focus on electronics and knowing the fast consumer turnover, Tharp admits, “There’s a value in turning off the electronics once in awhile and getting to know your neighbor.”
For more information about Ecycle Northwest, visit ecyclenw.com or call 912-3634.
