IMS Electronics Recycling Inc. is the newest tenant at the Port of Vancouver, USA, under a lease agreement approved by the Port Commission at its regular meeting Tuesday, March 13. This tenant brings the port’s industrial capacity to 100 percent full, according to port spokesman Nelson Holmberg.
IMS will lease approximately 50,400 square feet of warehouse space, at the east end of the port between Mill Plain Boulevard and St. Francis Lane, where it will operate an electronics collection, recycling and processing facility. This will be the company’s first expansion outside California where it has operated for the past 10 years.
IMS works with non-profits, municipalities and other businesses to help them get rid of electronics waste. Operations at the Vancouver facility will include testing and refurbishing usable materials, separating metals from plastic, removing leaded glass from CRT devices and batteries and toner cartridges. Materials will be shear shredded and an automated process will separate plastic from metals in shredder materials.
Materials accepted at the facility will include: computers and laptops, monitors, televisions, printers, fax machines, copiers, network equipment, stereos, speakers, LCD and Plasma displays and cables. Other appliances, lamps, chemicals and hazardous waste will not be accepted.
IMS expects to have its Vancouver operation up to speed by 2008 processing more than one million pounds of materials each month and employing 30 to 50 people. An IMS facility of the same size in California employs 40 workers.
The company chose to locate in Vancouver, in part, because of electronic product recycling legislation approved by the state legislature in 2006. IMS expects to draw recyclable materials from Seattle and Spokane as well as the Vancouver-Portland metro area to this regional facility.
– From Port statements
