May 13th, 2009
YouRenew wants to pay you for recycling your tech
It’s good to know that many entrepreneurs are still molded at an early age, despite all the doom and gloom that young people have been pelleted with for months along with the rest of us.
Yale University student Rich Littlehale, 22, has founded a company, YouRenew, that collects and recycles or redistributes about a half-dozen or so electronics categories. I am happy to say that Littlehale turned down a job at Lehman Brothers to start his company, which is kind of fortuitous considering that the company collapsed two years later.
Things that are covered by YouRenew include mobile phones, MP3 players, gaming devices, DVDs, notebook computers, digital cameras, external drives and calculators. You go to the site, enter your item, and they’ll tell you how much it’s worth, if anything. If it’s NOT worth anything, you’ll still get a box for shipping.
Yes, there are a lot of sites doing this sort of things now. But YouRenew is interesting for two reasons:
1) Simplicity. You don’t need to use a credit card to turn something in, which is something that was a big deal for students.
2) Transparency. Every time you send something in, YouRenew will donate money to an environmental charity.
Littlehale says the company’s preference is to find another life for the devices that it collects, so deals with larger companies that can help it with this mission (such as the mega cell-phone recycling and redistribution company, Re:Cellular). Mobile phones are actually the most common thing sent to the company: Someone recently sent in a 1989 Motorola phone that weighed about three pounds. This gadget was actually set aside by the 12-person team to become part of YouRenew’s “relics” shelf.
Ouch, since when did something from 1989 become a relic? Where does that leave me?
YouRenew hopes eventually to expand beyond its current categories to accept other sorts of technology. In addition, the company is trying to drum up more bulk donations from schools, businesses and other organizations.
Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist in the New York area with more than 20 years experience covering the high-tech industry. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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