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Stone shares recycling milestone ahead of E-Waste Day
Channel player’s app has helped customers give their unused and unwanted equipment the chance of a second life
Channel player Stone has reached a milestone in helping to prevent 1.5 million units of used IT from being dumped.
The firm’s Stone 360 app, which was launched in 2020, has been used by customers to get used hardware recycled instead of heading to landfill.
Stone has shared the progress ahead of tomorrow’s International E-Waste Day, which is designed to raise awareness around the need to recycle electrical waste.
The app has been used by 2,450 organisations to dispose of their old kit, with the majority of devices getting a chance to be refurbished and enjoy a second life.
Craig Campion, director of IT Asset Disposal (ITAD) sales at Stone, said the business was keen to make end of life disposal seamless for customers, and offered a range of incentives, including in-app cash rebates, social value reports and a tree-planting scheme.
“We want to encourage more organisations to see the value of sustainability, and demonstrate how so much of the tech we discard today can actually be put to great use,” he said.
“Launching the Stone 360 app has allowed our customers to make significant strides when it comes to disposing of their tech responsibly, providing them with quick and easy collection, and confidence that their data will be cleansed and devices recycled to the highest industry standards at our ITAD facility.”
Preventing e-waste
This weekend will see others active in the recycling space also encourage customers to take steps to prevent e-waste.
Chris Williams, founder and CEO of ISB Global, said it was important to recycle as much as possible from old devices.
“Old or broken PCs, laptops, mobile phones, and other appliances and hardware are a source for the base metals that are essential to the production of new hardware,” he said. “Every electronic device and appliance contains a range of precious and base metals such as nickel, gallium, arsenic, silver and indium. These metals are a finite resource, and their extraction and refinement is dangerous, expensive and damages the environment.”
Williams added that there were opportunities for those in the industry that added recycling expertise to their customer offerings.
“E-waste opens up a significant commercial opportunity for forward-thinking waste and recycling companies to collect and then recycle this old technology at scale,” he said. “They can take it apart, and sort and remove the valuable elements to return back into the market for reuse.”
The focus of this year’s E-Waste Day, initiated by the WEEE Forum, is to focus on “invisible waste” and encourage more attention to devices that are slipping through the net.
“Many people don’t recognise some battery-powered or wired-in products, like a smoke detector or smart thermostat, as an electrical product because they don’t have a plug,” said Pascal Leroy, director general of the WEEE Forum. “They are also unaware of the hazardous components e-waste contains. If not properly treated, substances like lead, mercury or cadmium can leach into and contaminate the soil and water.”
