SMR Worldwide rebrands

SMR Worldwide, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based information technology asset disposition (ITAD) and electronics recycling company, is rebranding. The “complete” rebrand includes a new name—Sprout—logo, website, mission statement and values that better align the company’s brand with Sprout’s value proposition, the company says.

“Basically, the entire mentality of how we do work is changing,” says Alex Cummings, SMR Worldwide marketing specialist. “We’re taking a lot more of an environmentally conscious, sustainably transparent approach.”

Sprout has grown from a single location in 2014 to four facilities in 2020, with plans to open a new facility near Boston and in Europe within the next year. The company will introduce capabilities to “better enhance the growing needs of enterprise partners.” Currently, it provides an array of software-driven solutions, including data destruction, decommissioning, on-site shredding, redeployment, remarketing, recycling and more.

SMR Worldwide CEO Shelly Li says, “We are distanced from the scrappy startup that spun out of a Duke University dorm room. But despite how far we’ve come, we remain steadfastly dedicated to innovating at the very edge of sustainability and technology. Our new name embodies both our commitment to putting the planet first and innovating every day like it’s day one.”

As part of the rebrand and new in-house software system, Sprout is launching a zero waste to landfill policy, which will allow clients to track their end-of-life assets downstream, as well as environmental scorecards with each job order. The scorecards highlight data, including how much material was recycled, Cummings says.

“What we’ll be able to do, for example, is when an enterprise company sends us a job order for a thousand laptops, we can break down the exact amount of metals and plastics that were recycled,” Cummings says. “We have a calculator that allows us to determine how many trees and how much carbon emissions were saved by recycling their assets.

“We’re going that route because what we found with working with enterprise companies is they all have sustainability initiatives, but nobody in our space can supply them with those exact numbers in real-time. That’s why we’ve built our own calculator in-house that will do it on the front end of every single job order.”

When assets arrive at Sprout, each device is assigned a tracking number, Cummings explains. If the device, such as a laptop or cellphone, is tested and can’t be resold as a working asset, Sprout will remove each component, including the LCD screen and hard drive, and assign tracking numbers to those assets as well. Clients can then track where each individual asset is sent for recycling or refurbishment, Cummings says.

“That helps [clients] with their sustainability efforts,” he says. “It’s giving them a complete circular viewpoint of what they’re doing.”

The rebrand is built around conversations SMR Worldwide has had with its enterprise clients over the past year, Cummings says.

“Everything that we do is based on feedback from them,” he says. “Instead of developing a program that’s one-size-fits-all, everything we do is customizable. If a client comes to us and needs certain reports done or they need to be able to view certain points in the process, they get complete access to our system. If their assets come in the front door and we scan them, the enterprise client can log in to the system, go to the job order and see where their assets are in real-time.”

Sprout’s software system creates certificates of destruction and certificates of recycling for clients as well as a settlement summary of the complete ITAD process from beginning to end.

“When I started here a year ago, one of my first initiatives was to figure out a way to consolidate all of the data into an easy-to-read presentation that an IT asset manager would take to a CIO (chief information officer,” Cummings says of the settlement summary. “We’re also showing empathy toward our clients because we understand they’re busy. If we can make their job easier and make them recycling champions, we’re all about doing that.”

He says many of Sprout’s large retail clients publish data from their environmental scorecard in quarterly sustainability reports, which are typically available to stakeholders and to the public. Cummings adds that the company’s new environmentally conscious approach has attracted new clients.

Sprout recently gained two of its biggest clients based on the new environmental scorecard feature, Cummings says.

“The more you work with Fortune 1000 enterprise companies, the more they have those larger sustainability efforts,” he says. “They are environmentally conscious and those are the types of companies that we’re building our future around.”

Sprout’s Compliance Manager Suzanne Griffin adds, “Our new brand symbolizes continuous growth and innovation. Sprout is a name that represents what we do and will allow us to grow into new areas as we scale. Overall, we feel that this brand is more accessible and better aligns with our objectives as a company.”