New York-based e-cycler The 4th Bin is seeking to...

New York-based e-cycler The 4th Bin is seeking to broaden its service portfolio to help offset the high costs of responsible recycling, co-founder John Kirsch told Consumer Electronics Daily. The 4th Bin sent a letter to clients last week promoting the company as a “full-service firm” that provides “a range of end-of-life solutions” for retired electronics. Additional services included on- and off-site data destruction, IT asset value recovery and consulting on sustainability practices to meet state, federal and international laws, it said in an email. Challenging 4th Bin is the dearth of “legitimate [recycling] companies out there,” which is both good and bad for 4th Bin, the only New York City recycler to have certifications from both e-Stewards and R2, Kirsch said. “We went to great lengths to get the highest certifications,” he said, but consumers and businesses largely don’t know what that means. Kirsch referred to what can be a “very shady industry” involving recycling exporters and importers who want to acquire equipment to ship it to brokers, and it’s not always clear where product winds up if it hasn’t gone through e-Stewards-certified companies, he said. As an e-Steward recycler, certified by Basel Action Network, “it’s highly regulated, you're audited yearly, all of your vendors are looked at and you have to abide by these rules,” Kirsch said. That’s costly for a company like 4th Bin that uses 10 vendors that have to be regularly vetted, he said. Kirsch wouldn’t quantify costs but said, “it’s not cheap.” Another trend affecting the e-cycling business is downsizing of electronics, he said. “Laptops are hard to recycle” because they have to be taken apart, he said. Also, a reduction in metals in manufacturing has affected metals-recovery income in recycling, he said. The 4th Bin’s income primarily comes from its pick-up fee per product, which can range from $50 to $10,000, he said.