SRS Launches E-waste Trade-in Program with SURFsara

Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS) announced that SURFsara has selected SRS as its e-waste recycling vendor. SRS will ensure all SURFsara's electronics are responsibly redeployed, remarketed or recycled.

Electronic equipment that is at the end of its useful life with SURFsara is returned to SRS for disposition. SRS assesses the assets for potential resale as whole units or parts and components and diverts as much as possible to be refurbished and remarketed via the trade-in program.

Assets are resold to end users who are then obliged to trade in their own used assets in return for a discount on their new purchase. For every unit that is sold, a comparable unit is handed in for responsible recycling. Recycling volumes are increased, electronics are disposed of correctly and irresponsible e-waste dumping is avoided. Prior to recycling, all data is securely erased from SURFsara's equipment.

This partnership extends the usable life of SURFsara's equipment, optimizes its value, encourages reuse and attracts more volume of materials for recycling.

"There is a huge demand for sustainable e-waste solutions for datacenter equipment," said Leonieke Mevius, community manager of corporate social responsibility at SURFsara, in a statement. "As the collaborative organization for ICT in Dutch education and research, SURF supports education and research institutions in making their IT more sustainable. This includes the sustainable disposal of hardware. We encourage people from research and education institutes to exchange knowledge with us on this subject."

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"We believe that moving from an unsustainable linear model to a circular model is the path forward to avoid depleting finite raw material resources," said Jelle Slenters, head of business development EMEA for SRS, in a statement. "Reusing and recycling retired IT assets and electronics enables our clients to benefit from improved processes, better environmental outcomes and improvement to the bottom line."

If it is not economically feasible to reuse equipment, the units are shredded and sorted to recover materials. Recycling materials for remanufacturing diverts material from landfill or incineration and provides a feedstock for making next-generation products.