Yesterday, I was in Chicago to speak at the Electronics Recycling Conference hosted by Recycling Today. It was a good gathering of professionals and influencers there to discuss and learn about the latest electronics recycling efforts.
My panel was looking at approaches by some of the large OEMs to implement customer recycling programs for electronics and I was joined by representatives from Sony, Panasonic and Waste Management.
Any gathering like this is a good chance to talk about Dell’s commitment to offer recycling services for the products we make. We’re want to remind customers and industry alike, that we will recycle anything with the Dell brand on it for free at any time, other brands of equipment for free with purchase of new Dell. Our home pick-up program will come to consumer’s homes to pick up the used equipment. In short, we’re making it free and convenient for consumers to do the right thing. The results are showing, a few weeks ago we announced that we recovered 102 million pounds of used products from customers globally in 2007 for responsible recycling.
I also had a chance to speak on our work with Goodwill on the Reconnect program. This unique partnership is bringing free recycling to more U.S. consumers every day and helping support Goodwill’s job training and community building missions at the same time. Just last week Reconnect expanded to cover Western New York State and you’ll be seeing this program expand more this year.
We know it’s critical to make recycling free and convenient for consumers to take part. And we’ll continue to find ways to partner with stakeholders and policy makers, as well as with customers, to help raise consumer awareness about the importance of recycling used electronics.