Ingenthron started Good Point Recycling in 2003. The company has grown from a single employee to 19, he said. Last month, he moved the business into larger space tucked away in an industrial park off Exchange Street in Middlebury. In a typical week, he sells about 1,000 computer monitors and TVs and destroys another 3,000. Ingenthron is also president of the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association, which sets fair trade standards for international recycling. He certifies that the electronics are wiped clean of information, that the recyclables are handled properly and that each load exported is not bound for disposal. "There's so much controversy in this business now," Ingenthron said. The nonprofit association seeks to set ground rules. Certified recyclers have to prove that they are doing the work to sort out pieces of electronics that are usable. A box of computer chips in the office at Good Point is proof that the company has gone through the computers individually. At Good Point, computers are wiped clean and tested. and Those that are working are sold, some domestically on eBay, but others as far away as Senegal. Ingenthron, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, is eager to work with entrepreneurs overseas to recycle goods no longer wanted here while providing that provide poor people in developing nations with a much-needed product more cheaply.
Cameroon RPCV Robin Ingenthron founded Good Point Recycling
Recycle or reincarnate
Published: Sunday, December 9, 2007
By Terri Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer
MIDDLEBURY -- Piles of cast-off TVs, computers and other electronics sit on pallets across the floor of a warehouse. Memory cards, cords and chips fill boxes. In an office away from the pallets and forklifts, Good Point Recycling employee Jason Scott runs software to erase the hard drives of aged computers.
This is the land of misfit electronics. Good Point Recycling is a waystation where it is determined whether these old devices are worthy of reviving or if their elements should be separated and recycled into something new.
These castoffs are on a path that Clare Innes, marketing coordinator of the Chittenden Solid Waste District, hopes more electronics will take in the course of the gift-giving season. As area residents unwrap new TVs, computers and DVD players and companies update outdated equipment with the new year, the solid waste district hopes the old ones will be recycled.
That's better, Innes said, than having them collecting dust in the corners of basements or filling up valuable landfill space. By law, computer monitors cannot be dumped in Vermont landfills because of the lead they contain, so they have to be recycled. But the rest of the bulky boxes can also find new life.
Most people prefer to see that happen, said Good Point Recycling founder Robin Ingenthron. "Eighty percent of the people would rather pay $5 to recycle a computer than toss it," he said.
Since the Chittenden Solid Waste District started taking electronics for recycling in 2001, it has collected 684 tons, Innes said.
Both Chittenden Solid Waste and ReCycle North accept old electronics. A small fee pays for recycling thoseitems that are no longer of use. ReCycle North, an authorized Microsoft refurbisher, repairs and sells what it can -- most of it locally -- and sends the rest to be recycled through Good Point, where the solid waste district also sends its electronics.
While electronics recycling is a growing practice, it is also sizzling with controversy, as grim stories have emerged about the dumping of toxic and worthless electronics in developing countries. Innes said people have called the solid waste district worried about contributing to those problems. She assures them that the electronics Vermonters drop off at the district's centers are handled properly.
Ingenthron started Good Point Recycling in 2003. The company has grown from a single employee to 19, he said. Last month, he moved the business into larger space tucked away in an industrial park off Exchange Street in Middlebury. In a typical week, he sells about 1,000 computer monitors and TVs and destroys another 3,000.
Ingenthron is also president of the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association, which sets fair trade standards for international recycling. He certifies that the electronics are wiped clean of information, that the recyclables are handled properly and that each load exported is not bound for disposal.
"There's so much controversy in this business now," Ingenthron said. The nonprofit association seeks to set ground rules. Certified recyclers have to prove that they are doing the work to sort out pieces of electronics that are usable. A box of computer chips in the office at Good Point is proof that the company has gone through the computers individually.
At Good Point, computers are wiped clean and tested. and Those that are working are sold, some domestically on eBay, but others as far away as Senegal. Ingenthron, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, is eager to work with entrepreneurs overseas to recycle goods no longer wanted here while providing that provide poor people in developing nations with a much-needed product more cheaply.
The World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association filmed a shipment last year from Good Point to Senegal in an effort to show people that what's being shipped has a legitimate home. In Senegal, computers are readied for sale. Computers that once sat on a warehouse floor in Vermont will sit on a desk and be revved up in Senegalfor new life.
Contact Terri Hallenbeck at 651-4887 or thallenb@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
