Feature on All Green Electronics Recycling

Special Feature on All Green Electronics Recycling by OC Metro

Special Feature on Arman Sadeghi
Founder and CEO of All Green Electronics Recycling
February 01, 2010

It’s not easy being green in the middle of a crippling recession, but Orange County resident Arman Sadeghi, founder and CEO of All Green Electronics Recycling, has not only created and propagated an environmentally friendly business, he’s effectively minimizing electronic waste throughout Southern California.

Sadeghi, 32, was born in Iran and moved to Orange County with his family when he was 9 years old. At 16, he started his own computer company. Years later, after earning his neuroscience degree from Berkeley, the green movement hit, and Sadeghi was inspired to combine his electronic and business knowledge with his environmental goals. The result was All Green Electronics Recycling.

All Green offers free, proper and safe recycling of electronic waste to ensure that hazardous materials aren’t dumped into a landfill or sent to a Third World country.

“We take unusable computers, monitors, televisions, cell phones and other obsolete products and break them down into usable and sellable commodities,” Sadeghi says. “The goal is that this free service will encourage people to recycle in a responsible manner.”

All Green’s brief history is a testament to the achievement of Sadeghi’s goals.

Launched just one year ago, All Green Electronics Recycling’s rapid growth is nothing short of astounding. Between January and May of 2009, as the only employee and using a borrowed office, a borrowed van and a rented storage unit, Sadeghi collected about 10,000 pounds of electronic waste. One month later, he was hiring people weekly to accommodate the 30,000 pounds that came in. In July, he moved his business to a 20,000-square-foot facility in Orange and collected about 80,000 pounds of materials. Then, in November, the company made its first monthly profit, collecting a record 280,000 pounds of e-waste. Sadeghi’s projected influx for January 2010 is more than 600,000 pounds of recycled electronic material.

Much of January’s material has been collected through All Green’s Orange County e-waste campaign – a blitz that has never been done by just one company. By partnering with cities like Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley, as well as chambers of commerce, schools and nonprofit organizations, All Green is collecting record numbers of outdated electronics.

“During the Huntington Beach recycling event, we collected more than 100,000 pounds of e-waste,” Sadeghi says. “That’s equivalent to four tractor trailers full of electronics. The following Saturday, we collected 75,000 pounds in one day at Fountain Valley.”

Clearly, there’s a great demand for proper and safe recycling of electronic materials, and Sadeghi wants to meet that demand as efficiently as possible. All Green serves both residential and business clients nationwide, and will pick up any amount of e-waste for free, charging only a small fee for nine items or less.

In addition, Sadeghi knows his business clients have special concerns regarding data security, so All Green also erases all data, at no charge, in accordance with Department of Defense standards. For a small fee, clients can also receive documented certification verifying this secure process.

As demand has grown, so has All Green.

“Over the last year, in terms of material we’ve collected, we’ve doubled in size every 45 days,” Sadeghi says. “Based on this growth, in 2010 we expect to collect about 10 million pounds of e-waste. Imagine the positive impact that will have on the environment.”

There is no doubt that as technology continues to evolve and consumers continue to replace obsolete items, All Green will continue to grow at a stellar pace.