Member Spotlight
Business: full service electronics recycling company for e-waste removal and recycling, ITAD, and onsite data storage device sanitization.
Headquarters: Palm Beach Gardens (and Riviera Beach)
Year founded: 2014
Founder and president: David Palmer
No. of employees: 5 full-time, plus subcontractors for large jobs.
Website: usarecyclingcenters.com
The next generation of internet connectivity, 5G, is expected to be revolutionary, exponentially speeding up tech innovation. But for David Palmer, founder of USA Recycling Centers, it also means electronic waste is also growing exponentially.
“With a lot more devices becoming smart devices. wired circuit boards will be everywhere. Just throwing that stuff in the garbage can be hazardous to ground water, the environment,” said Palmer, president of USA Recycling Centers. “Everything needs to be handled properly.”
E-waste is already a massive environmental problem.
According to a recent United Nations report, nearly 45 million tons of electronics were tossed out in 2016, but only 20% has been recycled in some way. In the U.S., the rate of recycling is closer to 25%. While that sounds better, it’s not always done in a responsible manner.
Worldwide, the report said, only an estimated 15% of e-waste recycling is done by socially responsible companies.
Count USA Recycling Centers (USARC) as one of those.
Headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, with a warehouse in Riviera Beach, USARC is a fully certified, full-service electronics recycling company offering e-waste removal and recycling and ITAD (IT Asset Disposition), as well as onsite data storage device sanitization and shredding to ensure complete data privacy.
USARC, which has customers nationwide, services B2B customers including corporations, particularly in the healthcare or finance fields with a lot of sensitive data, smaller companies with technology equipment, government contractors and aviation engineering firms, among others. To expand its territory beyond the Southeastern U.S., USA Recycling Centers also partners with its vetted network of subcontractors.
Palmer, who grew up in Palm Beach County, learned about electronics recycling while he was a concert promoter in California. From time to time, he had to purchase equipment to build stages and began going to swap meets and started reselling recycled electronics. When he decided to move back to Palm Beach County, he started looking to start a new business.
Unlike in California, where there were many recycling companies, locally “at the time there was very little going on in electronics recycling here, so I started a recycling company,” Palmer said.
USARC provides provide environmentally responsible solutions that ensure secure destruction of digital data. “We are physically crushing the hard drives at their facility and logging serial numbers and certifying the destruction has taken place,” Palmer said.
After documenting and sorting all materials, scrap materials are then distributed to its responsible network of certified processing facilities that adhere to the most stringent industry standards, Palmer said. Some of the components or complete working units are refurbished and resold, extending their useful life.
“A lot of what we do is documenting what is happening to the devices – they are either resold or turned into raw materials again for manufacturing. We are very thorough,” he said.
Still, market challenges are many.
“There are other electronics recyclers that don’t have proper certifications and say that they are recycling but are illegally exporting equipment to foreign countries where labor laws and regulations are a lot different than ours and they have very dirty, toxic waste processing,” Palmer said.
USARC’s mission states, in part: “First and foremost, our commitment to the health of the local and global environment remains paramount.”
And in addition to the massive environmental impact, if the information contained within isn’t properly and thoroughly sanitized before this equipment is discarded, the repercussions can include legal, financial, and public image liabilities for a company or organization.
In a blog post on USARC’s website, Palmer added: “Identity and intellectual property theft and environmental damage risks are too severe to take chances in this industry. A simple check of a company’s certifications, standards, and protocols, is a great starting point in vetting a vendor and avoiding liability in an environmental incident, as well as legal and financial woes due to sensitive information leakage.” You can find USARC’s certifications here.