Ecycle Pros helps you destroy and/or recycle numerous IT assets (e.g. laptops, hard drives, printers, tape libraries, etc.) in a reliable, environmentally friendly manner.
Ensure reliability and consistency from collection through final destruction of end-of-life IT assets.
Compliant, environmentally correct disposal of potentially hazardous
e-waste.
Be sure that your critical information isn’t lost, stolen or jeopardized in any way.
Prior to IT Asset Disposition, you must ensure that all computer media and associated data is permanently destroyed and non-recoverable.
Ecycle Pros helps you establish a defensible, documented, and repeatable process to prepare, handle or transport, and destroy the data that resides on your electronic media either at your data center or at our destruction facility.
E-waste is now the fastest growing component of the municipal solid waste stream. Unfortunately, Electronic waste isn’t just waste – it contains some very toxic substances which ultimately end up in the biosphere and our food chain when they are not recycled properly.
Ecycle Pros adheres to the highest standard of environmental responsibility and worker safety, protecting human health and the global environment.
Americans line up in droves every year to buy new gadgets, but the discarded older models of devices are too often shipped by recycling firms to foreign countries to avoid the cost of processing the toxic scrap.
Electronics recycling is becoming less profitable as tech companies try to save costs by using fewer rare minerals like gold and copper in their devices, while the resale value of commodities extracted by recycling like steel, copper and aluminum has declined sharply in recent years. Ecycle Pros faces increasing costs to dispose of old devices like phones and computers in an environmentally safe way, while other businesses that promise to do so cut costs by shipping them to nations like China.
Responsible recyclers lose business every day to companies who ship electronic scrap overseas or simply dump it in warehouses instead of processing it.
Improperly dumping electronics is dangerous because of the toxic materials in the discarded gadgets like lead, cadmium and mercury, which can seep into soil and groundwater, contaminate the air if they are burned or poison people handling them.
There is unfortunately a lot of egregious behavior going on in the name of electronics recycling, There is almost nothing as hard to recycle as electronics.
Despite the importation ban, scrap dealers, repairmen and second-hand salesmen in nations like China and Ghana form informal cottage industries by showing up at docks to buy the electronic waste and risk toxic exposure in the hope of making extra cash by recycling.
The most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency reports that the U.S. average household in 2013 owned 28 consumer electronics, and in that same year the nation generated 3.14 million tons of electronic waste. The United Nations reports that only 16 percent of the world’s e-waste in 2014 was recycled by government agencies or companies sanctioned by regulators.
Mollie Lemon, a spokeswoman for the EPA, says the agency supports the Basel Convention, participates in its working group on environmentally safe management and regulates the export of hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The EPA exempts most electronic waste as non-hazardous, however, except lead-lined glass cathode ray tubes used to build older models of TVs and computer monitors.
“While many used electronics and electronic waste items are not considered hazardous waste by the United States, any used or waste electronics considered to be hazardous would be managed under RCRA and its implementing regulations,” Lemon says.
There are laws on electronic waste in 25 states and the District of Columbia, but only the federal government has the power to restrict exports.
Nearly all the state laws require device makers to pay for the recycling of a certain quota of electronic waste every year, but those quotas are not high enough to solve the trash problem. Giving manufacturers the ability to set low prices they pay independent recycling firms that partner with the state programs also lowers the incentive for firms to safely dispose of the scrap.
Manufacturers set prices so low that it is difficult survive if you are a responsible recycler in this industry, especially after the commodity prices crashed.
Consumer electronics companies are less responsible recyclers than providers of larger corporate electronics
We’re] working with over 160 recyclers around the world, whose facilities we hold to rigorous standards of environmental compliance, health and safety, and social responsibility,” according to the report. “Whenever possible, we recycle our products in the region where they’re collected, reducing the carbon emissions associated with shipping. When we have to ship, we do it responsibly. Because we work closely with all our recyclers and with vetted facilities, nothing is dumped unsafely in developing countries, which is a common problem in our industry.”
Technology companies should make smartphones and other gadgets more sustainable by building them with fewer toxic materials, making them easier to repair and using batteries that last longer.
U.N. Seeks to Solve Global E-Waste Problem
It is unclear whether recycling efforts offered by manufacturers will make a difference, however. Ramon Llamas, research manager for the mobile sector at International Data Corporation market research firm, says that 40 percent of Americans simply leave their old mobile device in their drawer at home when they buy a new gadget instead of recycling it.
“Making devices more repairable would probably not make a dent in the electronic waste problem,” Llamas says. “The refurbishing market in the U.S. is not huge since you can get a new phone for pretty cheap, especially if you have phone insurance.”
out of the entire volume of electronic waste shipped abroad probably 25 percent gets reused.
Consumers who want to be more environmentally responsible when disposing of their gadgets can bring old devices to Ecycle Pros and be assured of their proper disposal.