A broken laptop dumped in a closet, the outdated phone stashed in a junk drawer, Keurig in the back of your pantry, the DVD player that’s … somewhere.
We all have those holdouts, a growing stash of old electronic junk that we know we’ll probably never use again, but for whatever reason, we don’t know how to safely or appropriately get rid of it.
Tampa’s Urban E Recycling will help, for free.
Founded in 2012, the electronics recycling company took in 7.5 million pounds of local electronics waste last year. Urban E Recycling breaks electronics down to recover the wire, plastics and most importantly, the valuable precious metals like gold, silver and copper that make the circuit boards work in the first place. With 20 employees, Urban E Recycling’s $2.2 million annual revenue is a result of collecting, sorting and sending those precious metals to a smelter so that they can be sold and used to manufacture new products.
“Our mission statement is, 'If you make recycling of electronics convenient, affordable and secure people will do the right thing with it,'” Greg Rabinowitz, chief operating officer for the company, said.
Urban E Recycling has three to five trucks running every day around the Tampa Bay region, transporting items from businesses and homes to the 27,000-square-foot warehouse, where hard drives are run through the shredder and then processing. The shredding process is captured on video and then sent to the previous owner with a recycling certificate of destruction.
“You see people nervous and scared about their data. (The shredding process) really lets you see that it’s gone and you’ll see the relief on people,” he said.
Individuals can also bring their old electronics to the warehouse, where they can watch their hard drives go through the shredder.
From there, the staff separates the items into about 65 different categories, depending on the grade of circuit board (a computer from 1985 will be handled differently from a 2015 tablet, for example), the types of wires and other factors.
Urban E Recycling isn’t the only electronics recycler in the area. Big retailers, like Staples or Walmart, also have programs for processing these items. But even so, Rabinowitz explains that only about a quarter of electronics waste in the U.S. are being recycled, while the rest is sent out with the other trash to landfills or are incinerated. And since China stopped accepting U.S. electronics waste in the last two years, there is even more demand for domestic businesses like Urban E Recycling.
There are no federal laws regulating the disposal of electronics in the U.S., but about 25 states have passed laws surrounding how these items should be handled, and Florida isn’t one of them. All the same, Rabinowitz said, it’s a matter of increasing awareness and providing exceptional customer service.
“The amount of stuff going (to landfills) that is not processed properly is a problem for the environment,” he said. “If you pull just 10 percent back out, you’re a massive company.”
His clients are now all over Florida, from Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties, as well as Sarasota, Bradenton, Orlando and Miami. Major accounts include hospitals, the Florida Department of Corrections and even the IRS.
The company has a small satellite warehouse in Lakeland and is soon adding new space in Pinellas County. Down the road, Rabinowitz said he hopes to add another location in Orlando.
