Editor’s note: Electronics recycling will be featured in sessions at the 2026 E-Scrap: The Longevity Conference Oct. 26-28 in New Orleans.
ITAD has evolved quite a bit over the couple decades it’s been recognized as a full-blown industry. But what exactly it looks like depends just as much on where you’re located as what you do.
Industry leaders from around the globe discussed where ITAD stands in their regions during last week’s ITAD Summit in Las Vegas. Different areas have reached different levels of market maturity, the experts said, creating unique regional challenges in a worldwide industry.
Australia
The Australian ITAD market is playing catchup in some respects, according to Aaron Blacklock, chief sales officer for Renew IT. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have all expanded with a local presence in the last few years, but companies are buying as many graphics processing units as they can to bulk up the data center infrastructure, with Blacklock citing much local debate about where to build new centers.
“We are so incredibly late to the party,” he said.
Expanding the market outside of data centers has been a slow process, he said. The country may be five years from being able to do refurbishments domestically at scale, with the skill set largely lacking among local workers to get electronics operational again.
That’s important not only from an infrastructure perspective but also from a compliance point of view. Upgraded penalties under the Australian Privacy Act, one of the world’s toughest federal laws relating to data privacy, can levy multi-million dollar fines for leaked or otherwise improperly destroyed data, creating more of a need for certified ITAD vendors. The nation also has strict landfill bans and federal recycling initiatives that will guide future movement.
A growing population (Australia just reached 28 million people) will put more of a strain on the current infrastructure and spur more demand, Blacklock said; the country’s ITAD market is projected to grow more than 6% per year into the next decade. To help with that, he said ITAD companies there need to adopt more robotics and other automated functions into their operations.
India
The world’s third-largest e-scrap producer behind China and the United States, India has a market that’s more mature than most.
Federal bans prohibit sending e-scrap into or out of India, which has helped the nation develop a strong ITAD market, according to Divvye Kohhli, co-founder and director of Terranova Eco Management Pvt. The infrastructure is in place to process the e-scrap the country produces — 1.41 million metric tons per year, according to the country’s Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change — and service a large-yet-growing volume of customers around the world, he said.
The next step will be to build up India’s network of data centers, which stands at 153, according to Cloudscene. With 1.32 billion residents, that puts the nation ninth in global density; the United States, in contrast, has 5,427 data centers for 342.6 million residents. Demand has surged, Kohhli said, creating more need.
“Five years from now, there will be a lot of data centers,” he said. “We want to have more domestic data centers, control the data within our country.”
A surge in data centers will dictate the next wave of ITAD feedstock, as more materials from these centers enter the waste stream more quickly. That will require ITAD companies in India to find the right point balancing sustainability, material recovery and profitability, he said.
One way Terranova is doing that, he said, is through enhanced mineral recovery, which the company does in house. Retrieving gold, platinum and other critical minerals from discarded electronics is part of an intricate process to reuse as much material as possible, helping Terranova operate a zero-discharge business that also is a registered e-scrap recycling facility.
“A good ITAD company is the one that creates sustainable value and material value,” he said.
As the market grows, so does the knowledge base of Indian customers and residents, Kohhli said. Visibility will help companies there separate, giving customers a glimpse into the futures of the devices they discard and reuse.
“Customers won’t ask what happens with assets,” he said. “They will want to see it live, in action.”
Latin America
A lack of regulation has created more of a piecemeal approach across much of Latin America, according to Jose Rivera, president of E-Cycling Puerto Rico. Renewable industries have grown exponentially in his country since Hurricane Maria destroyed much of the infrastructure in 2017, with electrical components and solar panels among the areas seeing the most progress, but the back end of the market hasn’t kept pace.
More than 90% of all materials there are handled by scrap yards as opposed to formal ITAD companies, creating a lack of data security.
“They have rudimentary wiping techniques,” he said. “They need to protect their information.”
An influx of smart watches and other data-bearing devices with built-in lithium batteries has created additional disposal challenges, he said. The infrastructure among scrap yards and some other handlers can’t always safely handle such devices, contributing to a 97% e-scrap mismanagement rate in Latin America, according to the UN Institute for Training and Research.
Even gathering information such as this is challenging, as UN investigators had to calculate how to compare information from more than a dozen disparate sources. That lack of cohesion extends to many other areas, Rivera said, including surcharges.
“In the Dominican Republic, for example, cell phones have high taxes,” he said. “Customs officers determine the real value at inspection, regardless of what you declare. And it can be whatever they determine. This can make or break any good deal. Buyers have to pay taxes at inflated values.”
A move toward regional community is growing in Latin America, starting with the ITAD Association, which hosted the inaugural meeting of its LATAM Committee this month. The goal is to reduce friction, improve processes and cut down on local bureaucracy, according to Daniel Palacios, a committee member who manages ITAD for Green Computer in Argentina.
The industry is becoming more advanced there, Rivera said, and companies are starting to make community connections to set themselves apart. His company’s Computers for a Cause program donates used laptops to residents who’d otherwise never have access, which he said builds trust and brand reputation.
“Half the population in many of these countries don’t have access to credit cards and technology,” he said. “The social impact, as an industry, is vital to what we are all doing. Sustainability has been more on the top of the heads of the decision makers.”
United Kingdom
Like in many other places, western Europe is dealing with demand and price surges that has upped both the costs and the opportunities, according to Craig Campion, COO for ITAD at Converge Stone. Double-digit annual percentage growth in the UK’s ITAD market has forced companies to rethink how they can maximize what they get from the products they handle; Converge Stone, he said, has done so by becoming the UK’s only ITAD company with an in-house recycling operation.
Retooling what’s done internally is reshaping other parts of the region’s ITAD industry. More companies are investing in refurbishment operations, he said, as about 98% of refurbs are done in Dubai and other foreign areas.
A 17-year industry veteran, Campion said he’s seen a shift in that respect as well as in how customers think about the data they’re turning over.
“Now, it’s a matter of, ‘How can you prove what happens to my device?’ ” he said. “If you’re not demonstrating what you’re doing as a business with the waste, you’re missing out.”
The UK has also been missing out on data centers, he said, although the roughly 550 it houses still place it third in the world behind the US and Germany. The increasing need has caused DDR5 RAM prices to surge there, but he said that’s done little to quell demand.
Campion also expects AI and robotics to dominate the region’s ITAD market in the next few years, noting how these issues have come to light seemingly overnight.
“AI, memory — this wasn’t discussed last year,” he said.
