Providing comprehensive recycling solutions for electronics and other electrical equipment— eCycle Solutions

As the sophistication of IT hardware grows, the question of what to do with retiring or end-of-life computer equipment intensifies. Companies must keep data secure and compliant, but they must also consider environmental and financial factors — simply sending data center hardware to the shredder or the scrapheap no longer cuts it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in our-data driven age, the world is manufacturing more and more IT hardware, not less. Whether companies like it or not, they are finding themselves constantly channeling their spending toward the latest and greatest devices.

But all IT hardware has a lifespan that eventually comes to a close. Either the device stops, or your business decides to upgrade to a more modern alternative. Whatever the reason, there comes a time in every business when hardware must be disposed of properly. Amidst the plethora of IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) solutions in the market, eCycle Solutions stands head and shoulders above the competition. eCycle Solutions is among the most technologically advanced ITAD solutions provider in North America. eCycle Solutions operates multiple asset recovery and electronics and electrical equipment recycling facilities across Canada. The firm provides custom-designed, environmentally friendly, and secure asset recovery and recycling solutions across all sectors with convenient return-to-retail depots for residential sectors, municipality-focused collection systems, and asset recovery services for corporations, institutions, and governments. eCycle Solutions has over 350,000 sq/ft of warehousing and processing space across four sites. Hence, asset recovery and electronics recycling have never been this easy.

Michael Collins, President & CEO at eCycle Solutions, exclusively spoke to CIO Bulletin. Below is an excerpt of the conversation.

Q. Technology keeps the world in a good place. How are you contributing to creating change?

At eCycle, we are constantly changing and innovating our tear-down and recycling processes. This allows us to increase the efficiency of our processes while reducing our footprint. It allows us to maximize our efforts and recycle as much of the material as possible while producing the purest form of the commodity to send to our downstream network. This allows our partners to recycle our material easily while using less energy.

At eCycle, we are investing and expanding our asset management services program across Canada. We are firm believers in reuse before recycling in the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle). This allows us to avoid recycling material and instead redeploy equipment securely and efficiently back into the market for an additional life. Internal metrics are constantly tracked at eCycle to look for improvement at our facilities, such as the amount of waste we produce. Our current recycling rates are 95%+.

We contribute to creating awareness about electronics recycling and ITAD through new customers, social media, news outlets, and referrals. Our organization believes in creating change internally and externally by continually improving our procedures and processes at our facilities across Canada, including a significant investment recently in a plastic float sink system to produce a cleaner output of plastic.

eCycle Solutions continues to add partners across the Country. We provide municipalities with their electronic recycling programs for their residents and work with retailers where the public can drop unwanted electronic devices.

Q. What is IT Asset Disposition?

Asset Disposition is the disposition, whether by sale, lease, transfer, redeployment, destruction, or otherwise of material. IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) is a business built around the disposition of obsolete or unwanted IT equipment in a safe and ecologically-responsible manner. ITAD vendors such as eCycle specialize in the process of streamlining the disposition of IT assets while minimizing costs and maximizing recouping of losses.

When a business updates/upgrades and replaces equipment, asset disposition would be a disposal program for those assets tailored to the business based on previous meetings to understand needs/wants/etc. Ideally, our first preference would be to reuse the items and put them back into the marketplace rather than recycle them.

Q. How proud do you feel about being Canada’s largest e-waste recycler?

It’s great to work for a Canadian company knowing we are making a difference in our own backyard. It’s encouraging to work for a company that takes immense pride in ensuring we’re not cutting corners or taking shortcuts for our processes.

As the largest e-waste recycler in Canada, I think it’s vital for eCycle to set the gold standard of what’s expected in the industry and be an example for best practices among our competitors. On top of being proud to work at Canada’s largest e-waste business, there is a sense of pride knowing about all the material that is deferred from landfills, especially given the current state and focus lately on sustainability in our world. We continue to bring these solutions to residents and businesses to help create change and establish ourselves as the leaders in Canada.

Q. Can you throw light on environmental solutions for IT assets?

We have two main categories for recycling IT assets; Resale/ITAD and recycling.

• Resale/ITAD – refurbishing equipment that has reuse potential and giving it additional years of use.
• Recycling – stripping the unit down to the bare commodities and recycling those commodities individually to ensure all material is diverted from landfills.

Q. What do you recycle, and for whom?

At eCycle, we have a multitude of different customers and products we recycle. Our most common would be standard electronics, anything that you can plug into a wall. We regularly see computers, laptops, phones, TVs, printers, and wires. We also recycle refrigerated appliances, bicycles, batteries, ATM machines, and more. Our customer base ranges from municipalities, original electronics manufacturers (OEM), SMB, Private Sector, Educational Institutions, and anything in-between. With our coast-to-coast solutions, we can offer support to any customer who requires material collected and serviced.

Q. What is included in your tailor-made services?

All our customers have unique and detailed requirements specific to their needs. At eCycle, we are able to support these needs by tailoring some of our services to requirements. Some of our more common requests include customized settlement reports, specialized secure transport, onsite data wiping, hard drive destruction, same-day shredding, witnessing the shredding process, plant tours, and onsite site assessments.

Q. What has been your Covid Response Program?

https://www.ecyclesolutions.com/covid-19-response-program/

2020 was unlike any other year seen ever before. Having a global pandemic to deal with is challenging for businesses and the rest. While operating in various provinces across Canada, we had to stay abreast of the ever-changing government rules and rolling lockdowns, along with positive COVID cases throughout the second wave.

We want to highlight the contributions of the HR team, they helped to manage the business through uncertain times while maintaining compassion, swift action, and professionalism. While we were not prepared for a pandemic, the team quickly assembled to put together new written policies & procedures, implement new work protocols, and transform many aspects of operations, ranging from the way we arrive at work to how work is conducted on the floor.

Being in the waste industry and having been deemed an essential service, we were leading many other sectors in creating and implementing these protocols in a swift manner. These protocols have proven to be effective. We have prevented the spread of the virus at the workplace through the enactment of these protocols.

The CSST in Quebec, the Ministry of Labour in Mississauga, and Worksafe BC in British Columbia have recognized our HR and operations teams collectively for doing a great job ensuring compliance public health regulations. Huge thank you to the human resources team!

Meet Michael Collins

Michael joined eCycle Solutions in June 2018 as President and CEO. Prior to joining our team, he held various executive positions in the security and recycling industry in Europe, the USA, and Canada with several global companies. He worked for nearly 23 years at G4S Cash Service, rising to VP of Operations Support in the organization.

He is a results-oriented senior executive with demonstrated operational and sales leadership, profit improvement, and strategic business development. His proven strengths are leadership in unionized and non-unionized environments, strategizing to meet corporate objectives and processes for the desired outcome. He also has proven financial, managerial, and communication skills to lead an organization.

“Canada’s Largest & Most Reputable Electronic Recycler.”