E-Waste: A Profitable Business
e-Cycle, a Hilliard-Based, Ohio company was founded by Chris Irion and his wife, Tonia, in 2005. This company shows used 3G iPhones that it refurbishes and sells abroad, and shares the profit with corporations, businesses, and institutions that donate the devices.
From a two-person start-up, this company has grown into the 8th fastest-growing environmental service company in the 2010 Inc. 5000 list. So, the company is growing and adding more green jobs for those who live in Ohio.
This company's revenue grew 400% in 3 years, from $700,000 in 2006 to $3.5 million last year. It gives "trash to treasure" a whole new meaning. To keep growing, the company has plans to hire more people; it expects to hire at least 62 people before 2011.
In 2010, e-Cycle will keep 1.2 million cell phones and accessories — 200 tons of waste — out of landfills. The good news is that a company like e-Cycle exists. The bad news is that it's evident that most electronics aren't built to last, and that consumers' hunger for newer electronics is insatiable.
e-Cycle works with companies and groups of all kinds to collect unwanted, unneeded, or broken electronics. Some of the profit from recycling or reselling the devices is shared with the recycling partner, making e-Cycle a truly uniquely ethical company in that it shares its profits fairly.
Apart from refurbishing electronics for resale overseas, e-Cycle also recycles used cell-phone batteries. This is a significant benefit to the environment because cell-phone batteries contain toxic heavy metals such as lead and cadmium that could leach out of landfills into groundwater.
The company works with a metal refinery that processes phones that can't be reused by removing the lead and cadmium as well as precious metals such as gold and silver. e-Cycle also reprocesses phone batteries, which are usually lithium-ion.
Upping its ethical stance, e-Cycle also prevents exposing sensitive information on the cell phones by following data-security standards established by the U.S. Department of Defense as well as the guidelines of the manufacturer.
Chris Irion's environmental sensitivity, his innovative thinking, and his business sense have come together to create a win-win-win-win-win situation: the environment benefits, his business grows, jobs are created, those overseas who need a cheap, refurbished phone can afford to buy one, and those who donate their phones get paid.
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