Electronics Recycling

What we do on a recycling project

We own the front of the chain, which is the half that usually has no paperwork. We collect the devices, count them against your list at your site, seal what leaves, and book every unit in against its asset tag and serial. When somebody asks two years later where a specific unit went, that record is the answer.

The data comes off before anything is judged for recycling. A device is only a recycling candidate once sanitization has been validated, never before, so the commercial decision never gets ahead of the data decision.

Materials recovery happens downstream, and we qualify who does it. Smelting, shredding and refining are specialist operations and honest recyclers do not pretend otherwise. What matters is whether your provider can show the qualification and verification records for the vendors it uses, which is exactly what R2 requires and exactly what we keep.

Who this is for

Organizations that need the disposal to be defensible rather than just gone: schools and districts, government departments, and businesses with an asset register that has to reconcile.

If nobody is going to ask you where the equipment went, you don't need us for this. If someone will, the answer has to exist before they ask.

What we handle

Phones, tablets and laptops. That's the whole list, and it's deliberate.

The recycling scope is the same, and for the same reason: our list reflects what we're set up to count and document, not what some downstream recycler could theoretically accept. Monitors, servers, networking gear, loose drives and loose batteries need a provider scoped for them.

The downstream question, and our answer

Ask any recycler where your material goes after it leaves their building, and how far down the chain they can name it.

For a lot of this industry, the honest answer is that it goes to another company, which may send it to another company. Recycling is a chain rather than an event, and a certificate is only worth the chain behind it.

That's the question to put to anyone you're considering, and it would be self-defeating to ask it without answering it ourselves.

Our answer: the chain starts at your loading dock, runs through our own facility, and continues to downstream vendors we qualify and keep records on. We can tell you what we collected, what we received, what was sanitized and how, what was graded for reuse, and what went onward for materials recovery.

Under R2 the responsibility for what happens next does not end at our gate, which is the reason those records exist at all. Ask us for them on your project. Ask any other provider the same thing, and notice whether the answer is a document or a reassurance.

How custody works

This is the part we perform, so it is the part we can describe precisely.

At your site. We count units against the list you supply — units, not weight. We are not a weighbridge and we do not issue tonnage figures; a recycler who takes the material will. Discrepancies are recorded at the moment they are found, and a device that isn't on your list is written down as exactly that.

At handover. Containers are sealed, seal numbers recorded, and you get a signed manifest before the vehicle leaves.

At intake. Seals are checked against the manifest before anything is opened, and every unit is booked in against its asset tag and serial. Data-bearing devices are sanitized and validated before anything is judged for materials recovery.

Onward. What cannot be reused goes for materials recovery through downstream vendors we qualify, and we keep the verification records. Under R2 the responsibility for what happens next does not end at our gate, which is why those records exist.

Nothing moves before you have written acceptance and transport instructions from us.

What you get back

The collection manifest — what was picked up, counted against your list, discrepancies noted, seal numbers recorded, signed at the point of collection — with the intake reconciliation alongside it.

The disposition record, showing what happened to each unit: reused, or routed onward for materials recovery, with the downstream verification records available on request.

A certificate is only worth the custody chain behind it. Anyone who hands you a "certificate of recycling" for material they never touched is handing you a piece of paper that won't survive the first person who reads it carefully, and that is true of us as much as anyone.

Service area and scheduling

Colorado Springs facility, collecting nationwide, by arrangement. The published mailing address is not the facility and takes no drop-offs — service area and scheduling.

Recycling is the last option, not the first

A device that still works is worth more to you intact than shredded, so anything testable should be tested before it is processed for materials. We don't test — but it is worth writing that sequence into your instructions to whoever does, because the default at a recycler is materials, not reuse.

How reuse works

What to check on any recycler

Colorado requires that any site separating, sorting, processing, dismantling or baling waste electronic materials registers with the state as a recycler, and that registered recyclers file a report each year by March 1 (6 CCR 1007-2, Part 1, §§ 8.3.3 and 8.3.5(A)). The state publishes a public list and checking takes a minute.

Worth knowing how to read it, though: registration is an administrative requirement and a reporting obligation. It isn't a quality endorsement and it doesn't mean the state assessed how anyone recycles. A provider presenting registration as a certification has the categories wrong.

Ask us for ours in writing at scoping, and ask the same of anyone else you are considering. The obligation attaches to sites that separate, sort, process, dismantle or bale material, so the question is what a given site physically does, not what a company calls itself. A provider who cannot answer that question quickly is telling you something.

The public list is the check. It takes about a minute and it is worth doing before the equipment moves.

Before you dispose of anything in Colorado, two rules bind you rather than us

The landfill ban isn't the one that matters for a business, and the definition of "electronic device" it uses is not the definition the universal waste rule uses. They diverge on phones.

covers the landfill ban and its five exclusions, the hazardous-waste determination that is yours to make, the state universal waste election, and the written disposal policy CRS 6-1-713 requires of you.