Electronics Recycling

Techway Services Inc., Dallas, and GEEP International of Nevada have formed a joint venture company called GEEP Texas. The joint venture is part of Barrie, Ontario-based GEEP’s plan to create the largest electronics recycling and end-of-life IT services companies in North America.

The venture involves technology and asset transfers between the two companies. GEEP International will design, finance and install processing equipment for electronic scrap at the new GEEP Texas headquarters plant in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The cost of the investment is estimated at more than $4 million. In return, Techway Services will share its data destruction processes and technologies.

Under the agreement, Techway Services will continue as a stand-alone company offering complete IT asset disposal services while processing all electronics through GEEP’s ISO certified facilities.

The joint venture follows an earlier agreement between GEEP and Techway. In May of 2007, GEEP selected EBAN 2.0 as its volume data overwriting utility, licensing the technology from Techway Services.

The Dallas/Fort Worth plant is to be the first of several GEEP facilities slated to open across North America by next spring.

The purchase, made in conjunction with a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Demonstration Grant, will allow Cascade to increase recovery rates of usable commodities from electronic equipment scrap.

"We have found a powerful shredding and separation technology to allow us to shred and mechanically separate hard to disassemble devices into recoverable material streams that will enhance our total recovery rates for all collected electronics," Neil Peters-Michaud, Cascade CEO and co-founder, says.

In a press release, Cascade states the shredding and separation equipment, when used in combination with manual disassembly, "will demonstrate an innovative approach to domestic e-scrap processing that yields higher recovery rates."

Prior to the installation of the Vecoplan RG42, Cascade recovered 78 percent of all materials using traditional disassembly methods. With the addition of the new shredder, the company says it expects to increase recovery to 89 percent.

"Using the shredder allows us to more rapidly address the increasing demand for responsible, domestic electronics recovery and recycling," Director of Operations James Windisch says.

Cascade offers a full spectrum of information technology asset retirement services, from hauling and logistics services to refurbishing and repair to demanufacturing of equipment for recycling to secure media destruction. The company is certified by the International Association of Electronics Recyclers in addition to being ISO 14001 certified. Cascades operates facilities in Wisconsin and Indiana and was recognized in 2007 as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States by Inc. magazine.

More information about Cascade is available at www.cascade-assets.com.

Consolidated Asset Recovery Systems (CARS), a Raleigh, N.C.-based provider of asset management services, has risen $623,000 in Series A funding from Wilmington Investor Network (WIN) of Wilmington, N.C., and from Springboard Capital of Jacksonville, Fla.

The funding will enable CARS to target the consumer lending market.

CARS automates the asset recovery process using the CARS I-BEAM (Internet Based Electronic Asset Management) Web portal, which is available at www.
ez-recovery.com.

According to the company, lenders are achieving cost savings of from 40 percent to 60 percent, which are measured through the automatic reporting features within the system.

The company’s "pay by the case" Web-based model allows each lender to pay for the service based on its usage.

The financing will be used to bring on additional resources and manage growth, allowing CARS to accelerate market penetration and scale the business to meet increasing demand, company President Steve Norwood says.

Michael Cain of WIN says, "We looked at a lot of deals lately, and very few have the growth potential of CARS. We are very excited about helping them become the leader in this segment of the market."

Consolidated Asset Recovery Systems was founded in February of 2005 and has a customer base of prime and sub-prime lenders.

Springboard Capital LLC is a member-managed private equity fund focused on seed and early stage investment. Springboard's members, all individual accredited investors, guide the fund's activities and play a role in all aspects of opportunity analysis, due diligence, investment structuring and post-investment collaboration.

Wilmington Investor Network (www.wilmingtoninvestor.com) is a manager-managed pledge model angel investment entity. Wilmington Investor Network is a founding member of the Angel Capital Association (www.angel
capitalassociation.org), which adheres to a series of best practices in angel investing. The Angel Capital Association and Angel Capital Education Foundation are sister organizations spun off of the Kauffman Foundation (www.kauffman.org) in 2006. WIN invests in early stage technology and life science entities located within the Southeastern United States.

In late August, the computer recycling firm WeReycle! Inc., based in Wallingford, Conn., along with Hewlett Packard and the Maryland Department of Environment held a free consumer electronics recycling event in Baltimore.

The one-day event resulted in the collection of more than nine tons of electronics that otherwise would have been disposed of at landfills.

The event also satisfies HP’s requirements for a free computer take-back program as part of Maryland's Computer Recycling Pilot Program.

Baltimore was the second in a series of two HP collection events in Maryland. The first was held in Easton, Md. Combined, the events diverted more than 14 tons of electronics from municipal solid waste landfills.