Computer Recycling For Your Business

Chicago computer recycling is a thriving industry that has already gone through massive changes. If you are going to find the best value for your company with regards to computer recycling, you need to be an aware consumer. During the early days of electronics recycle, the model in use was simple one. Computer recycle companies, who were often junk or solid waste companies that looked at computers as just another revenue stream, charged clients for computer recycle pickup of their used computers and e-scrap materials.

Usually, the waste management company then just put the electronic waste in an overseas container and shipped it overseas to China or other developing nations. This wasn't really negligence; the waste companies just did not know what was happening to the material. And it was a great deal for them - you could charge for electronic recycle pickup, and you could earn money from it downstream. This was the model for the first few years - however, it quickly came to public awareness that the material shipped overseas was not being recycled in a responsible fashion - it was being smelted and processed in countries with nothing like America's EPA and with no concern for the environment.

So the industry changed again; now the focus was on responsible electronics recycling of the material - but this hurt the bottom line, as some of the processes now required to recycle the computers, and especially the CRT monitors were very expensive. So the electronic recycle companies that stayed in the business or got into it had to charge even more upfront - as they were making very little downstream now, or worse, ended up having to pay for their downstream.

However, today, the industry is changing again and this is all for a simple reason. Most of the early recyclers were, as we mentioned before, waste management and recycling companies that looked at the materials strictly from a commodity point of view. Now new companies are in the industry, companies made of IT professionals and technicians, who look at the material not from a scrap point of view, but from a re-use and recovery point of view.

Chicago computer recycling should now properly be called computer asset remarketing, as these new organizations, by recovering, refurbishing and reselling the materials that still have value, are able to remove the downstream liability from the recycling equation. In fact, remarketers can often return value to the company disposing of the assets. Of course, the traditional recyclers who charge for electronic recycle pick up still exist, but in the new world of asset remarketing, your company shouldn't be paying to get rid of your computers - it should be getting paid for them.