This posting has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence, hyperscale data centers, or the recent plunge in NAND flash prices – things that occupy much of our thinking these days. This is an “old school” ITAD story – of which there are many. Hopefully others will share theirs, as it’s important to remember where we came from. Here’s one of mine:
Back in 2012, we had been awarded a contract from one of the large cable/satellite providers to process millions of “retired” set top boxes (STB) for environmentally responsible recycling. Our code name for the company and the program was “Keystone”.
Most of the Keystone set top boxes had a hard disk drive inside for recording movies etc. These hard drives could be wiped, tested, graded, and resold in the global market. At the time we were processing 160GB, 256GB, and 500GB HDD. As I recall the 500GB drives had a value of up to $35.00 each (current market value for a 4TB drive).
Our job was to simply take possession of these “STB”, remove the hard drive, and conduct a high level separation of remaining materials for downstream recycling.
Then we would insert each HDD into a disk array connected to a proprietary software program. The software was designed to:
- WIPE (overwrite all sectors)
- REPAIR (reallocate bad/slow sectors)
- TEST (grade A,B, or C based on sector quality)
- and REPORT on the disposition of every drive by unique serial number.
It was a great program for Keystone as $$ recovery from the sale of the hard drives funded the cost of all their other recycling activities – with no money out of pocket for them.
However, the whole problem wasn’t being addressed. At one point, they came to us with something slightly different. Though they were able to successfully collect millions of boxes through their standard program, their goal was to successfully collect ALL customer equipment for environmentally responsible recycling, and that wasn’t happening.
The problem was that there were many set top boxes that were abandoned in the field where customers would just not return via the standard process. Even with the threat of charging a credit card on file, many people just would not take the time to “box up” and take their gear to the nearest UPS store. Keystone needed a solution to get those other boxes back, and asked us to come up with one. We thought about and discussed the problem for weeks internally, trying to think of some way we could solve this problem.
Then on one Thursday it came to us. Working alongside my management team of Joe Nye, Nicole Simmon, and Ed Latham, we began to formulate a plan.
The previous day Nicole had a FedEx package delivered to her office which was enclosed in a “Tyvek” bag. Someone remarked how incredibly strong and durable the bag was. We began to wonder if such a bag could possibly be used to ship something as large and heavy as a cable/satellite box? It seemed like a crazy idea. We also wondered if it was shipped that way, what impact would it have on the hard disk drive inside? Could the HDD withstand the rigors of a small package delivery system? We went through the appropriate testing and learned that the answer was “yes” to both questions.
We devised a plan to send every Keystone customer a cheap paper envelope which contained inside a folded pre-addressed, postage paid Tyvek bag into which the set top box could be inserted and sealed. The customer just needed to drop it at their the post office. We learned that the Tyvek bags were 100% recyclable and the “carbon credit” impact was very positive. However, the idea was useless unless we could move the shipments, so we went to find out if we could.
We set up meetings with UPS, FedEx, and USPS to explore the viability of executing the program within their system. UPS and FedEx came back quickly with a “no way” response. Frankly, we couldn’t blame them.
At that point, things looked bleak. Then we met with the US Postal Service expecting another rejection. We were shocked to learn that not only were they willing to do it, they were excited about it and offered a pricing schedule that was lower than what we had expected. At that point we knew we “were in business”.
And so the program began. Within a few weeks we were receiving hundreds, and then thousands of large white Tyvek envelopes with set top boxes inside. The program was a HUGE success. Not only was Keystone able to keep tons of e-waste out of landfills, they were able to recover millions of of dollars in “found money” to underwrite the costs of other recycling.
The program went on for years until the “abandoned” boxes slowly stopped coming in. Every now and then a random one still shows up. Either way it was, and is, a source of pride for us on a job well done.
I hope you liked the story. I’ve got many more.
P.K.
