Dive Brief:
- Entourage star and Dell Social Good Advocate Adrian Grenier has teamed up with Uber and Goodwill for Dell's NYC Tech Takeback initiative. For the initiative, Uber will offer to pick-up old e-waste from NYC residents and deliver the waste to Goodwill, which will then recycle it through Dell.
- Tomorrow, Grenier will join Uber in collecting the waste from lucky residents who request pickups.
- Through its upcycling program, Dell will take precious metals and plastics from the old e-waste and use it for new computers. The unusable material will then be properly recycled.
Dive Insight:
Electronic waste recycling is continuing to grow in the Big Apple, as the city is expected to recycle 1.5M pounds of e-waste by the end of this year. However, more needs to be done nationally, as 40 billion tons of e-waste is created annually.
"We all love our technology and we always want to have the latest and the greatest, but sometimes we forget the important recycling of that technology, especially the old ones," said Grenier in an interview with Bloomberg. "Some of us don't even think about it and we don't know that less than a sixth of our e-waste is actually recycled or upcycled."
Luckily, the Dell program is a national initiative. According to Grenier, any of the 2,000 Goodwill locations across the country will accept e-waste for the program. The initiative is part of Dell's 2020 Legacy of Good Plan.
This is not the first time that celebrities are getting involved in the waste management industry. In September, Leonardo DiCaprio made an investment in trash startup Rubicon Global. As more big-named stars draw attention to issues within the waste and recycling industries, more consumers and businesses are likely to increase efforts toward sustainability.
"I think it's time that we all start doing what we can to make sure that our e-waste doesn't end up in landfills," said Grenier.
