Texas-based Dell Technologies and New Jersey-headquartered LG Electronics USA lead the pack of winners of this year's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Electronics Challenge awards.
The awards recognize industry contributions in sustainable design and electronics recycling, EPA officials said in a release. according to an EPA news release issued March 3.
"It's going to take all of us working together to build a sustainable future, and I applaud the organizations recognized today for their leadership in essential electronic recycling efforts," EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in the release. "Electronics are a global economic driver with supply chains that reach around the world and products that play a big role in our daily lives. Because of these organizations’ efforts, we’re able to recover and recycle valuable resources like precious metals, critical minerals, plastics, and glass."
This year, EPA celebrated its eighth Sustainable Materials Management Electronics Challenge awards in a yearly announcement that recognizes industry contributions in sustainable design and electronics recycling. Winners honored this year presented significant progress in the consumer technology industry’s reduction of e-waste with a goal of creating a more sustainable future for generations to come.
Dell Technologies, based in Round Rock, Texas, and LG Electronics USA, headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, was among nine U.S. companies that received the EPA SMM Electronics Challenge Gold Tier Award for exemplary electronics collection and recycling programs. Other companies to receive the Gold Tier Award was Samsung Electronics, Montville, New Jersey; Sony Electronics, Inc., San Diego; Staples, Framingham, Massachusetts; TCL North America, Corona, California; T-Mobile Bellevue, Washington; VIZIO, Inc., Irvine, California and Xerox Corporation, Webster, New York.
Dell Technologies and LG Electronics USA also received the Electronics Challenge Champion Award for "innovative processes and products that focus on environmentally responsible ways to best use product materials throughout their life cycle," the news release said.
LG Electronics USA received the Electronics Challenge Sustained Excellence awards for the company's "cutting-edge innovations that demonstrated sustained excellence since the launch of the program in 2012," the news release said.
Earlier this year, Dell released information about its electronic recycling process and announced the company has produced more than 100 million pounds of recycled plastic parts with closed-loop materials in more than 125 of its product lines. Since 2007, Dell has pulled more than 2.5 billion pounds of used electronics from the waste stream for reuse or recycling.
All of EPA's Electronics Challenge participants together retrieved more than 158,000 tons of electronics from going into landfills, all of it going to third-party certified recyclers. Participants also avoided adding the equivalent of almost 430,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions to earth's environment, according to the news release.
