A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
Today, let’s talk a little about electronics recycling. An article in the E-Scrap newsletter talked about a well-known computer company located just a few miles north of us, The article entitled: “Dell report covers device recycling, tracking and more.”
“A global OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) says it has achieved its 2020 electronics recycling and recycled feedstock goals. The company also adopted e-scrap tracking as a permanent part of its recycling vendor auditing program, ” the article said.
The article continued, “Dell recently issued its 2019 sustainability report, which covers the performance of its e-scrap recycling and ITAD businesses, the company’s experience using device trackers from the Basel Action Network (BAN), its use of recovered materials, and more.”
ITAD stands for Information Technology Asset Disposition; essentially a business built around disposing of obsolete or unwanted equipment in a safe and ecologically-responsible manner. ITAD vendors specialize in the process of streamlining disposition of IT assets, while minimizing costs and maximizing recouping of losses.
From Dell’s report we find they have recycled 2.1 billion pounds of e-scrap since the 2008 fiscal year. Better than the goal of 2 billion pounds it had established. It used several different programs to achieve this.
One of which is "Dell Reconnect," a program which lets individual consumers drop off used electronics for free at over 2,000 Goodwill locations. In a little over 10 years, the Dell Reconnect effort collected over 500 million pounds of used electronics.
Another program is Dell’s Asset Resale and Recycling Services (ARR), which provides ITAD services for commercial customers. This program also had significant growth. In its recent fiscal year, ARR collections grew by 30 percent compared with the year before. Thus, it meant more than $23 million in resale value was returned to commercial customers this latest fiscal year.
To help in these efforts, last year, Dell used BAN’s new device tracking service, called EarthEye. It helped ensure the OEM’s recycling vendors were sending material to approved places. The project was so successful that it’s now a permanent part of the company’s electronics disposition partner audit program.
However, even though Dell collected more items, the overall weights are less. I found it recycled 160 million pounds of electronics, which is down 11 percent from the year before. The main reason is the company is designing and making smaller and more lightweight products; however, they are just as durable. This appears to be happening throughout the industry by major players.
Currently, Dell also has a pilot project to rebuild recycled hard drives, so they can be used again, rather than shredded and recycled. This new service uses broken hard drives collected from used storage devices. It then wipes all data from them, rebuilds them to usable devices, and resells them. So far, this project has generated $13 million. It also has diverted 303 tons from the recycling stream into the reuse stream.
Expect a little more on Dell’s significant recycling/resource-saving efforts next week.
Until then, do have a great one,
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Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or email omaier@txstate.edu .
