What’s my agenda?
In my first post, I mentioned existing and emerging legislation, politics, various organizations taking differing opinions on the issues and the business side of e-waste management. Before I start explaining what I’m learning about each topic (in future posts), I think it’s important let everyone know where I stand and what my agenda is.
First, let me explain my background and motivations for being in this business. I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the IT business and have done everything from crawling under desks as a helpdesk guy to running IT Departments for mid-size organizations. Over the course of my career, I’ve touched tens of thousands of computers. Eventually, I began to wonder what really happens to all of that equipment.
At one point, I tried to get rid of 30 or so computers and monitors. They were all about 3 years old and in perfect working condition - they simply weren’t powerful enough to run the business applications so we upgraded. I wanted to do the right thing and give them to charity or recycle them. Charities didn’t want them (even charities can be picky about the age of a machine) and recyclers wanted to charge an arm and a leg to take them off my hands. I was shocked and frustrated. I couldn’t give them away so my only choice was to pay a hefty fee to get rid of computers that we’ve already paid for. I ended up pushing the problem aside and storing them in my storage room until I had the time to deal with the issue (which was eventually passed on to my successor).
Fast forward several years to The 4th Bin. The ownership of The 4th Bin (including myself) are all IT people with similar experiences. There’s not a single trucker, professional environmentalist, waste management person, recycler (you get the point) among us. We don’t know anything about the behind the scenes of the e-waste and green movement. We’re techies and all we know is that, collectively, we touched hundreds of thousands of computers that need to be dealt with. And it needs to be handled responsibly and ethically.
So our (my) agenda is simple - create a profitable business (The 4th Bin) where we:
- rescue all forms of e-waste such as computers, laptops, monitors, printers and cell phones.
- ethically and responsibly recycle, or reuse, the equipment.
- partner with, and give back to, our local communities.
Those 3 points were pulled directly from our website and we stand by those goals and that agenda.
One very important company (and personal) position to note is that we believe that the best form of recycling is reuse. We believe that there is nothing more environmentally friendly than taking an already existing piece of equipment and moving it from one place to another. Extracting materials (metals, plastics, etc.) for reuse, commonly thought of as “recycling”, requires crunching, smelting and other processing. At the very least, processing requires energy (among other things needed to break down the components) and it will have a greater environmental impact than simply reusing existing equipment. So reuse is our top priority.
One more thing to note. We are running a “for profit” business. After all, I need to pay rent and feed my family and can’t continue to work for free (yes…working for free right now). But “for profit” doesn’t mean greedy or unscrupulous. We’re not looking to take advantage of the system or look for loopholes to make us millions. We’re ABSOLUTELY looking to do the right thing. And we’re putting our money where our mouths are. We’re setting up partnerships with non-profit organizations (such as our already existing partnership with City Harvest (www.cityharvest.org)) where we give them a portion of our proceeds.
With all of that being said, we have no political position or organizational affiliation. We’re in the early stages of formulating our opinions and position within the industry. All we want to do is follow the agenda that I listed above.
Sorry for the long post. I’ll try to keep it shorter in the future.
-md
