STC - Service Technology Consulting GmbH

At the STC technical expert office on their site at Poechlarn, every year several thousand damaged and partly serviceable electronic devices accumulate. It is a central concern of STC’s to dispose of these devices in the best environment-friendly way and, if possible, to revitalize them, respectively. Social Production offered hints in both directions, and showed new possibilities of cooperation.

The STC company give an expert opinion on electronical devices, which are, for instance after a lightning, removed. In their enterprise, the devices are checked, and marked with three different qualities:

• Green: repairable
• Orange: theoretically repairable – with heavy damage
• Red: not repairable any more

Some devices (in 2010 approx. 70 pcs) were handed over, in cooperation with the Faircheck company, to social enterprises in Styria (BBRZ Reha GmbH) and Upper Austria (FAB Reno) for further processing in the past few years.

It is the aim to have reprocessing done in Lower Austria in the future, in order to save transport routes, and to have larger quantities processed in a way that saves resources by social enterprises in their region.

In an average year, around 4,000 electronical devices accumulate (TVs, laptops, computers, coffee machines, dishwashers, garage door drives and many more).

The consulting team of KOMUNITAS OG have established contacts with two technical social enterprises in Lower Austria. One is Poechlarn Recycling of Caritas, dealing with disassembly of used devices, and the SoCom project of St. Poelten GESA, processing functional computers for socially disadvantaged persons at a cheap price.

A contact has been established between Mr. Babinger of STC and Dir. Hubmann of Poechlarn Recycling. Talks have been held, which showed that Poechlarn Recycling are capable of disassembling some of the devices accumulating. A concrete agreement has not yet been reached, mainly on account of the tragic death of the Work Manager of Poechlarn Recycling.

The contact with SoCom has not lead to the desired results, because SoCom only accept functional (“green”) devices, but these devices occur only rarely, and STC themselves have already found options of further processing for these devices.

Besides establishing a cooperation in Lower Austria, a contact in the Ukraine shall be intensified. STC wish to process repairable devices themselves, and equip schools in the Ukraine with these devices. This project is a perfect link of the ecological and social aims of STC.

“The consulting team of KOMUNITAS OG have shown us new options of cooperation in Lower Austria. I am confident that a result will be achieved with Poechlarn Recycling. I am especially pleased that we have developed our own social project in the course of this year, in which we intend to equip schools in the Ukraine with computers and devices repaired by us.” 

Manfred Babinger, Division Manager STC