Contributed photo/Fred GrantHOULTON — Bruce Jacobs was the featured guest speaker at the March 14 luncheon meeting of the Houlton Rotary Club.
Jacobs was the guest of Rotarian Mac Randolph, who first met Bruce a year ago at an electronics recycling event that the club volunteered to assist. Jacobs has lived in Maine for most of his life, graduating from Bangor High School in 1974 and then four years later graduating from the University of Maine at Orono with a degree in business administration.
For 26 years Jacobs worked in transportation and logistics for YRC Worldwide. YRC is headquartered in Overland, Kansas and is a holding company for a portfolio of “less-than-truckload” companies managing heavy weight shipments and flexible supply chain solutions for their customers to ship with confidence.
Upon retirement from YRC, Jacobs found that after he washed his car, cleaned the garage, and went fishing about one million times that he was ready to go back to work to “relax.” He landed a job at the Maine Community Colleges as an adjunct professor and worked for three years in that capacity.
The next decision he made was to create a company that would have an impact on the environment in Maine. He founded Electronics End LLC. Now this company is the second largest electronics processor in the state. The business is centered in the East West Industrial Park in Brewer.
Jacobs spoke about the business facts in his enterprise. This is a reverse manufacturing facility or de-manufacturing. In 30,000 square feet of space, the company can recycle goods. Around two million televisions have been recycled, close to 400,000 computer monitors have been recycled and millions of pounds of miscellaneous e-waste. E-waste businesses work closely with the Department of the Environment to communicate to manufacturers that their products should consider the end step of breaking down the product and the cost of recycling.
With the growth of the electronic gadget industry this Electronics End business was a natural outcome. Televisions, computers, printers, ink cartridges, circuit boards, cell phones, fax machines, scanners, DVD players, VCR players, batteries of all types, copier machines and microwave ovens all reach an end as upgrades continue in all of these products. People are encouraged to throw away the old and buy new.
Burning and burying these products has a huge negative impact on the environment, affecting groundwater and soil with contaminants. Gadgets that contain heavy metal and most all of the elements in the Periodic Table. These elements can be extracted and recycled. Maine has been leading the regulations around electronic waste furthering the need for a company like Jacobs’ business.
On Sept. 10, the Houlton Rotary Club plans to bring Electronic End back to Houlton on the way to being an annual event.
