I am delighted to introduce our updated edition of the Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS) newsletter. As our company continues to evolve, we felt it was a good time to give our newsletter a new look and feel. This new design and layout better reflect our corporate messaging and values.

The new title, RESOURCE, presents our company more holistically, as one specializing in both IT asset disposition services and final end-of-life electronics recycling. Sims Recycling Solutions contributes to creating a truly circular economy by supplying resources to appropriate industries.

Resources might include raw materials, refurbished components and parts, or complete redistributed and refurbished servers, computers and smartphones.

SRS has the ambition to be a resource of information regarding many aspects of the electronics recycling industry. We hope our aspirations positively add to your experience with us.

To summarize 2018, it has been an interesting year with developments both externally and internally. To start, externally the discontinuing of delivering different qualities of mixed plastics, metals and metal compounds into China via the National Sword Policy, has had a significant impact on the global recycling industry. This legislation created a massive stock pile of several waste streams all over the world and forced markets to develop more avenues for those streams.

In the short term this is causing unanticipated increases in recycling costs. However in the end this legislation will have a positive impact because it supports the European recycling industry. This support will help enforce more transparency, control and considerations regarding sustainability throughout the entire recycling chain.

Internally Sims Recycling Solutions invested in plastics separation and upgraded plants in Bergkamen – Germany, and also in Nashville – United States. In 2018 we installed a new plastics separation process in our Eindhoven – The Netherlands site, with more developments to follow. These upgrades enable our company to operate more efficiently, for example by delivering clean plastics fractions directly to plastics compounders of the worldwide electronics original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). 

We worked hard last year to close the loop on plastics recycling together with LaVergne (compounder) and Hewlett-Packard (HP). Sims Recycling Solutions delivers separated plastics from recycled electronic products directly to LaVergne, who then creates plastics materials for HP to use for manufacturing new products. This is a great example of a circular concept in action.

We have therefore received many requests from OEMs to create similar concepts. I am sure you will hear and see more about these developments in 2019.

Sims Recycling Solutions embraces innovation and our infrastructure and operational investments have helped our sites accomplish some great things over the past year. Here were some of our 2018 highlights:

  • SRS Stalybridge, United Kingdom and SRS Eindhoven, Netherlands installed new metals separation technology,
  • SRS Dubai, UAE moved to a new location to keep up with production growth,
  • SRS Sacramento and West Chicago, United States earned ISO 27001 certification, and
  • SRS Ballito, South Africa was the first e-waste recycling site in their region to achieve the R2 certification.

This past year SRS experienced an increase in demand for combined recycling and global IT asset disposition (ITAD) services. Many companies need a secure and sustainable service to protect their data and brand equity during the end-of-life process for IT equipment and electronics products.

2019 will bring us many new opportunities in the world of electronics recycling, and in the next issue of our new RESOURCE we will provide you with an outlook from our perspective.

We wish you all the best for 2019 and are confident our combined efforts will help “create a world without waste”.

Sincerely,

Marc Affüpper
Director Sims Recycling Solutions, EMEA