Within 18 months the company has grown from 10 employees and 350,000 pounds of electronics scrap being processed to more than 30 employees and more than 5 million pounds of material being processed, and have been able to do so while making a profit. Currently, Electronicycle is virtually debt free without any borrowing, he says.
Electronicycle has the statewide Massachusetts recycling contract for processing of materials the state has banned from landfills, such as monitors and televisions, which make up about 60 percent of the company’s volume, he says.
“A lot of states tried pilot programs with computers, and they [Massachusetts] went beyond the pilot program to ban materials and have a collection program to address TVs and computers,” he says.
Electronicycle began as an electronics repair shop, securing contracts for warranty repair work with companies ranging from Acer to Xenith, about 30 companies in all, he says. The business then moved toward the electronics recycling business when they began to recycle what could be repaired and resold.
Recently Envirocycle acquired staff and accounts from American Retroworks (dba Vermont Retroworks) and plant equipment from GreenPC Inc. The company has found to be profitable, a combination of refurbishing/reselling and scrap processing of the electronics has been successful. Ingenthron says that about 20 percent of what the company takes in is resellable and the value from that material comprises about 80 percent of the value of the total material taken in.
“What they [the technicians] do is pull out parts which are sometimes more valuable than the appliance,” Ingenthron says. “Dick, with 25 years experience as a certified technician, can look at what looks like to me a pile of garbage and point to a circuit board box and tell me it is worth $45. It is the repair service that gives us an advantage against others. If there are 50 computers to a ton and he can resell one computer, that yields a 20 percent savings.”
The company has a deal with Goodwill Industries where they pick up electronics donated to Goodwill for $5 to $10 fees from residents and then drop off refurbished televisions and computers as payment for the material collected, Ingenthron says. This deal led to Electronicycle shutting down its retail operation and dealing exclusively with local charities, which is something the company is very proud of, he says. Goodwill Industries will do about $4 million in retail sales of refurbuishd computers, he says.
“We do one-ay drop-ff collections and handle other things other than charities, but the relationship with Goodwill Industries is what we are proudest of now,” Ingenthron says.