Booming e-scrap partnership between 3S International and IMS Electronics

United States – US e-scrap recycling firms 3S International and IMS Electronics have joined forces to orchestrate a ‘€˜new era of recycling’€™ in the USA, they claim. The move pools the former’€™s access to cutting-edge BLUBOX technology with the latter’€™s extensive network and product expertise.

The structure proposed by the companies is that each shares its resources and collection methods. Once electronics are collected, they are sorted and the materials are shipped to the company which can recycle them best.

3S International provides its partners with the Swiss-designed BLUBOX – described as ‘the best technology in North America’ for mercury-containing devices such as LCD screens. This is said to be capable of treating 15 million pounds of e-scrap per year, thus meeting the e-recycling needs of around 6 million people.

Since partnering with IMS Electronics and a number of regional and national recyclers, including Kuusakoski Recycling and Valley City Electronic Recycling, 3S International has experienced ‘nothing short of an exponential boom’, notes vice president of sales & marketing Gina Yob. The first months of the partnership brought in more than 1 million pounds of end-of-life electronics and the numbers continue to rise.

‘The development of mutually-beneficial and strategic partnerships among US recyclers is really a shift in thought for how the industry currently operates,’ Yob comments. Only by working together, she believes, will the e-recycling industry as a whole be able to grow to the next level. ‘There is such a huge need for safe electronics processing and downstream solutions right now that it does not make sense for recyclers to be in competition with each other,’ she adds.

Linda McFarland, vice president of sales & marketing (eastern region) at IMS Electronics, comments: ‘3S has the only true process for the safe disposal of mercury and LCDs, which are set to be the next big item to recycle, following CRTs. There is a huge benefit to electronics recyclers to open doors for each other. We all specialise in different categories of recycling, and together we can do so much more to combat the e-waste crisis.’

With electronics recycling services in California, Washington, Ohio and Georgia, IMS Electronics has long focused on risk reduction through HIPAA and environmental compliance, earning numerous industry certifications such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and R2.

For more information, visit: www.3srecycling.com and www.imselectronics.com