Ontario-based Greentec’s “It’s Easy Being Green” e-waste recycling initiative has been rolled out since January 2019 and is already generating “increased volume”.
As Waste360 explains, the initiative “provides e-waste pickup and related services for businesses, plus a handful of e-waste drop-off sites for individuals around Southwestern Ontario.”
According to Tony Perrotta, Greentec’s CEO, who recently featured on the CTV News programme, ‘In Your Backyard’, “We’ve seen increased volume for sure,” adding, “Especially on the IT side of the business. We’re seeing over 30 percent there.”
Perrotta puts the rise in volume down to two things: the onsite pickup and “related services” Greentec provides, and the investments Greentec has made in its e-waste processing technology, particularly when it comes to the items that are harder to recycle.
While both the consumer and business sides are contributing to the growth in volume, Perrotta notes that currently the slant is towards the business side.
“It’s definitely coming more from the business side than the consumer,” he says. “We’ve set up a number of partner locations where consumers can drop off their equipment, and that’s helping. But we’re primarily a B2B company. Our logistics and operations are set up for us to pick up from businesses, government organisations and institutions. That’s what’s driving our volume.”
Also weighing in on the company’s methods, Greentec’s COO, Betty Pereira, noted that the company’s new chain-of-custody service is beneficial for businesses, as it is designed to track the movement of e-waste from the moment it leaves a business to its arrival at Greentec for processing. This helps eliminate any ‘tampering’ with sensitive materials.
“We offer a secure, transparent way for businesses to clear out their obsolete IT assets,” explains Pereira. “Our pickup services make e-recycling easy while keeping confidential business data protected.”
Perrotta goes on to reveal that the “It’s Easy Being Green” initiative isn’t the only factor behind Greentec’s burgeoning volume, explaining that another crucial factor has been the company’s R&D investments as well as new high-tech equipment.
“We’ve invested a lot in research and development,” he says. “We have state-of-the-art equipment to process harder-to-process streams of e-waste, like LCDs that have mercury backlighting.”
“We’ve set up a special line using the BluBox technology out of Switzerland,” he continues. “And we have a system that does optical sorting. It uses optical, infrared and metal detection, and it does algorithms of the three to do the separation. We also have some new robotic cells coming to help us process hard drives. That’s a first in our industry.”
