Gómez: ‘Anyone interested in recycling 15 000 computers from Mexico?’

Mexico – ‘€˜In Mexico, millions of stocked used computers are waiting to be scrapped, but so far no-one has seriously worked on a sustainable solution.’€™ So says Rolando Gómez, an IT entrepreneur from Puebla near Mexico City who has reluctantly taken up an involvement in e-scrap recycling.

Gomez’s company Pissalab delivers computers to government bodies and industries in Mexico. ‘For every new installed computer, I have to take back the old one,’ he told Recycling International during the recent International Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC) in Salzburg, Austria. ‘I have come here to meet e-scrap recycling experts who can help me to get rid of the stocked materials.’

In several warehouses around Mexico City, Gómez has stockpiled some 15 000 computers and screens to date – and volumes are continuing to grow ‘very rapidly’, he says. ‘In Mexico, in government buildings alone, some 3 million computers are replaced by new equipment each year. Most of these used devices are either reused or end up at companies like ours.’

The entrepreneur estimates that ‘more than 10 million’ discarded computer sets are already out there ‘having ended up in warehouses or dumped at landfills across Mexico’.

The country lacks a proper e-scrap recycling infrastructure – ‘at least for these massive streams of computers’, he adds.

As part of the IERC report in the No. 2 (March/April) issue of Recycling International, there will be more on Rolando Gómez’s search for e-scrap recyclers who want to do business with him.