http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/08/17/cash-for-electronic-clunkers/ This blog is about the impact of business on society. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:08:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/08/17/cash-for-electronic-clunkers/comment-page-1/#comment-1143468 The place in your house you don’t like to go Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:35:03 +0000 http://www.marcgunther.com/?p=1577#comment-1143468 [...] I spent the day today at the GreenBiz Forum 12 in New York. I’m a senior writer at GreenBiz, which does a great job producing events. I interviewed Dan Hendrix, the CEO of Interface, who’s picking up where the company’s legendary and visionary founder, Ray Anderson, left off; more here. And I wrote about Israel Ganot, the co-founder and CEO of Gazelle, a fast-growing startup that recycles electronics. Please read this story if, like many of us, you don’t know what to do with your old gadgets. I first covered Gazelle back in 2009. [See Cash for (electronic) clunkers.] [...] [...] I spent the day today at the GreenBiz Forum 12 in New York. I’m a senior writer at GreenBiz, which does a great job producing events. I interviewed Dan Hendrix, the CEO of Interface, who’s picking up where the company’s legendary and visionary founder, Ray Anderson, left off; more here. And I wrote about Israel Ganot, the co-founder and CEO of Gazelle, a fast-growing startup that recycles electronics. Please read this story if, like many of us, you don’t know what to do with your old gadgets. I first covered Gazelle back in 2009. [See Cash for (electronic) clunkers.] [...]

]]> http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/08/17/cash-for-electronic-clunkers/comment-page-1/#comment-283569 B. Klafter Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:43:33 +0000 http://www.marcgunther.com/?p=1577#comment-283569 This business model looks just like another company called Flipswap. Flipswap focuses exclusively on cell phones, but the basic concept is the same, i.e. buy recent vintage items of some value and take the others at no charge. The issue with the model is that the market for older, used electronics is rather limited and therefore a lot of the stuff ends up in the "developing" world. The fate of the goods at that point is what should concern environmentalists - are the items actually being used or are they mined for valuable materials or are they dumped somewhere? This business model looks just like another company called Flipswap. Flipswap focuses exclusively on cell phones, but the basic concept is the same, i.e. buy recent vintage items of some value and take the others at no charge. The issue with the model is that the market for older, used electronics is rather limited and therefore a lot of the stuff ends up in the “developing” world. The fate of the goods at that point is what should concern environmentalists – are the items actually being used or are they mined for valuable materials or are they dumped somewhere?

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