Bridging the divide

As electronics production continues to boom, outdated devices will be discarded in favor of updated gadgets. Although electronics recycling infrastructure has grown, recycling rates haven’t quite kept up.

According to a 2024 report from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the International Telecommunications Union, global electronic scrap generation is rising five times faster than documented e-scrap recycling. The report says more than 68 million tons of e-scrap were produced in 2022—up 82 percent from 2010—with less than one quarter of that documented as having been properly recycled.

Electronics collection programs have become increasingly popular in the U.S., attempting to curb the disparity between generation and recycling while promoting landfill diversion.

In May, AT&T Inc., in partnership with Houston-based electronics reuse nonprofit Compudopt and Castle Rock, Colorado-based recycling logistics company Recycle Global Exchange (RGX), launched an e-scrap collection program at 103 AT&T stores across Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Featuring in-store collection boxes, the program collects cellphones, tablets and laptops for refurbishment and recycling. Although AT&T historically has collected devices such as phones and tablets, this retail recycling program is unique in its acceptance of laptops because the company doesn’t sell them.

The program exists at the intersection of sustainability and social responsibility. Roman Smith, director of global environmental sustainability and social innovation at AT&T, explains that the company saw an opportunity to divert electronics from landfills and give back to local communities with this initiative.

For every 10 pounds of electronics collected, retail recycling program partner Compudopt has committed to donating a refurbished laptop to a local family in participating program locations.

“We have a $5 million commitment by the year 2030 … to connect as many as 25 million people to high-speed internet,” Smith says. “We want them to have not only the access but also the tools to be able to connect.”

Narrowing the digital divide, the chasm between those with access to computers and the internet and those without, has been one of the leading messages of AT&T’s retail recycling program. However, as an electronics diversion program, the company also is working to narrow the growing divide between e-scrap generation and recycling while giving consumers in the U.S. Southeast and Texas an outlet for electronics recycling.

“We’re trying to get customers to bring back their devices from an e-waste perspective, [and] we are doing something in the community to help bridge that digital divide,” Smith says.

Piloting pickups

Built on a 2022 pilot, AT&T’s retail recycling program has seen some changes since its inception.

“My job at the company and the sustainability role is really around how we … engage our consumers on sustainability,” Smith says. “We have done so many different programs. … What we started to say [was], ‘You know what, maybe we need these in-store boxes.’ So, we start with these in-store boxes to try to see if that connects.”

The pilot worked with 20 stores across Dallas and Austin in Texas as well as Atlanta and Seattle, testing those markets to see how consumers engaged with the program.

RGX, which provides logistics services for the current iteration of the program, arranged pickups with certified electronics recyclers once boxes reached capacity during the pilot phase.

“Imagine that we’re air traffic control for recycling,” RGX co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Paul Logsdon says. “We coordinate the pickups using local recyclers that are certified. The goal there is really to keep it as local as possible.”

The RGX platform connects businesses directly with R2 and e-Stewards certified recyclers for disposal and currently boasts more than 240 recyclers on its platform.

One of RGX’s goals has been to reduce emissions and logistics costs for companies. By aggregating a local network of service providers, the company can ensure materials aren’t traveling excessively far for processing.

“In the pilot program, we were recording all the recycling,” Logsdon says. “We were using R2 and e-Stewards recyclers to pick up the equipment and process it accordingly, wipe it, inventory it, provide CODs [certificates of destruction], provide value, and it was happening all through the platform.”

Outside the retail recycling program, RGX is expanding into different materials, including metals and batteries, to provide administrative services to more clients.

“In a past life, I worked as a reseller for the same kind of equipment, and I would see truckloads of equipment shipped thousands of miles to be recycled, and it just didn’t make sense, and that was the lightbulb moment,” Logsdon says. “I think the industry tends to really look at the back end and say, ‘I recycled this much e-waste. I have avoided future rare earth mining. I have helped reduce this much water waste. I have planted 16 trees.’ I think all that stuff is very important, but the numbers and the metrics, up until recently, weren’t agreed upon by the whole industry. So, we said, ‘Let’s start at the beginning and just solve that first mile problem. Let’s just keep it as close as possible.’ That’s tangible.”

When choosing which states to operate in after the pilot program, AT&T settled on the Southeast and Texas due to high participation rates.

“We found that the southern market—the Austin market and Atlanta market—really outperformed in our trials,” Smith explains. “Seattle did great, but it was not as great as the southern markets.”

The current program

Today, the program looks a little different. RGX still serves as logistics partner, but Compudopt has taken on the role of pickup, data destruction and determining whether materials should be refurbished at a Compudopt facility or sent for recycling. The nonprofit has a presence across all the program’s states, ensuring its employees never have to travel more than a few hours to collect the electronics.

Once a bin reaches capacity, employees at AT&T program locations can scan a QR code to create a new job in the RGX platform, alerting Compudopt of AT&T’s needs and requirements for that specific pickup.

Since the pilot, Logsdon says RGX has increased the platform’s automation and reporting capabilities. AT&T has visibility into every job requested and awarded pickup, as well as every job completed, which includes information on all costs, miles, weights and the value of the inventory.

“If a service provider processes a load from a store, it has to be reviewed to make sure the certification of data destruction is proper before it gets closed,” Logsdon says. “We keep all of those records for seven years attached to that store. All the information [and] all of [the service provider’s] certs are also attached forever to that job, so you can really download all of that if you get audited and see exactly what happened for each store.”

After Compudopt arrives to pick up the devices, its employees take inventory of all materials before securely transporting them to the nearest facility. According to the nonprofit’s website, it serves 68 cities across 27 states and also has a presence at 29 Micro Center locations.

“Once [the devices] are received at the warehouse, they’re reconciled again. They’re inputted into our donation software so that we’re tracking it that way, they’re inventoried and then they go through the refurbishment process,” Compudopt Chief Operating Officer Allison Katarski says. “If they fail out at any point during the refurbishment process, then they would go into our recycle queue.”

Compudopt’s recycling partners include Waukegan, Illinois-based Arcoa Group; Jacksonville, Texas-based STS Recycling LLC and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Sprout.

Data and device security are some of the top priorities for Compudopt, Katarski says, especially within the company’s collection partnerships.

“We really do everything within our power to ensure the data and the devices are secure from the time that we receive them to the time they’re cleared and wiped,” she says.

The nonprofit wipes devices using technology from Blancco Technology Group, Woburn, Massachusetts, that employs a three-pass wipe and a one-pass verification wipe.

As of August, Katarski says the program donated nearly 100 laptops, though no collected devices have met the refurbishment standard yet.

“[We] are optimistic that as this program grows, we’ll see an uptick in gently used device donations that we can give a second life,” she says.

As of September, the program has collected about 3,500 pounds of e-scrap, with 54 out of 103 stores requesting pickups. Smith says AT&T’s goal for the program is to collect 10,000 pounds of electronics by the end of 2025.

“This is definitely very unique in our industry,” he says. “When you look at the other carriers in our industry, no one is connecting e-waste in this way with the social efforts that we’re trying to do with the digital divide.”

The author is digital editor of the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at tkazdin@gie.net.