Getting the Most Out of Your E-Waste

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When companies dispose of their e-waste, it's not enough just to send it to a recycler. They have to find out what happens to the e-waste, where it's sent for processing, who's handling it and how it's processed.

AER Worldwide handles e-waste in countries around the world, working primarily with telecommunications companies and electronics manufacturers.

John Dickenson of AER spoke with GreenBiz Radio about what his company is doing about the e-waste problem, what business should know when they're getting rid of their e-waste and how proper disposal can have benefits in addition to helping the environment.

Jonathan Bardelline: John, if you could start off introducing yourself, and explaining what AER Worldwide does.

John Dickenson: This is John Dickenson, vice president of business development at AER Worldwide, located in Fremont, California. AER Worldwide is a global electronics recycler and asset recovery company supporting electronics producers with their environmental management, their products as they come off the market.

JB: Who are your primary customers, and what types of e-waste are they typically trying to get rid of?

JD: Our primary customers are generally global electronics companies who care what happens with their products at the end-of-life. The e-waste that they're trying to get rid of generally is two things: It can be their own products, and increasingly there's legislation globally for electronics producers to take responsibility for their products at end-of-life; and also, there are of course the products that they use in their day-to-day working lives - the laptops, PCs, printers, smartphones, etc. that they use, also, so there's two types of e-waste. And also, regarding AER in terms of those customers, we really do three things for them. One is to provide what we call brand protection to them, and that is to ensure that as their products come off the market or even, say, come out of their laboratories, that if they want that product destroyed that it is destroyed, and preventing any gray market issues.

Secondly and most importantly, whether it's destroyed or not, that the products coming off the market and the materials that make up those products are handled optimally from an environmental standpoint. That is either they're re-used, which, in some cases, the customer will allow, and secondly, if not, the materials that come out of the recycling and destruction process are then themselves re-used: Steel going back into steel production, aluminum back into aluminum production, gold, etc., etc. Those two items, brand protection and environmental management, really mitigates their risks of products coming off the market, and normally costs money to do correctly.

The third most important thing we do is asset recovery. We are an independent stocking distributor of electronic materials, and those materials are generally harvested from excess, obsolete and scrap electronic products from those customers. If they want us to re-sell those, we will re-sell them and then basically split the proceeds with them, with the intent that that income goes to pay for the cost of environmentally….managing the end-of-life products correctly.

JB: I'm sure the reasons you just gave play into this, but what are the main concerns customers give when they come to you? Why do they come to AER to dispose of their e-waste?

JD: They do, and to some extent repeating on part of this maybe, but their concerns are that with the products coming off the market that it does come off the market, and it doesn't go into a gray market, or, in some cases, pieces of it lead to counterfeiting. That's the aspect of destruction, or what we call brand protection.