Uriah Kiser sits down with Matthew Young of Electronics Value Recovery and Emily Chapman of Resource Recycling for a full look inside the 2026 E-Scrap Awards. The awards ceremony closes the E-Scrap Conference on October 28 in New Orleans, and this episode walks through every category, every nominee, and the gong show Uriah is hosting for the first time.
The Electronic Circular Innovation Award recognizes recent movers and shakers in e-scrap, ITAD, and circular electronics. Nominees include Adam Shine of Sunnking Sustainable Solutions, Andrea Murphy of Panasonic, Ken Thomas of Universal Recycling Technologies, Jeff Gloyd of Gloyd Recycling Solutions, and Kyle Wiens of iFixit. The Women’s RISE Award (Recognition for Inspiring Service and Empowerment) honors women who have mentored others in the industry. Nominees are Tricia Conroy of MRM Recycling, Selena Turnock of e-Stewards, Shannon Fertitta of RIOS, Kimberly Carol Stewart of the Nebraska Recycling Council, and Jennifer Foxworthy of Logitech. The Billy Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award honors total careers and mentorship in the spirit of the late ReMA advocate. Nominees are Craig Boswell of HOBI International, Joe Clayton of ARCOA, and Jim Levine of Iron Mountain.
Matthew Young, now Chief Revenue Officer after selling Electronics Value Recovery (which he started in a garage in 2018 with his dog Queso), will perform at the gong show by rapid-firing roughly 25 “rules of business” collected from lifetime achievement nominees and mentors over 15-plus years. Voting closes at the end of Tuesday night of the conference. Emily and Matthew both stress that nominees must be present to win—no remote award recipients. The episode also covers the peer-nominated process, the homecoming feel of the conference, pickleball, and the parade from the Hyatt Regency to the French Quarter ending at Pat O’Brien’s.
If you work in e-scrap, ITAD, repair, or circular electronics, this is the awards preview you need before New Orleans. Register for E-Scrap 2026 at e-scrapconference.com. Like the video, leave a comment on which nominee you’re watching, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you catch the next Resource Recycling Podcast.
Transcript of episode 5: The Resource Recycling Podcast
Host: Uriah Kiser, Resource Recycling | Guests: Matt Young, Electronics Value Recovery, and Emily Chapman, Resource Recycling
The awards and the gong show
Uriah Kiser [0:01]: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this edition of Resource Live. I’m your host, Uriah Kaiser. I’m the host of the Resource Recycling Podcast. On Resource Live today, we’re talking all about the 2026 E-Scrap Awards. And on the pod today is Matthew Young. He’s with Electronics Value Recovery. And Emily Chapman, she is the marketing partnerships person large and in charge of our group here at Resource Recycling. Hey, guys.
Matthew Young / Emily Chapman [0:33]: Hi.
Uriah Kiser [0:35]: Thanks for coming on. I’m excited. As you guys know, it’s my first time in New Orleans, my first time coming to this conference, and my first time being asked to host a gong show at the awards. So this is a lot of firsts for me.
But Emily, I want to talk to you first, because it’s early where you’re coming on and I want to get your brain going right now.
Emily Chapman [1:01]: Yeah.
Uriah Kiser [1:02]: Tell us about the awards. This is part of the annual E-Scrap Conference, the circularity conference. There are several awards: the Electronic Circular Innovation Award, the Women’s RISE Award and the Billy Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award. Tell us more about the awards ceremony and what we can look forward to in New Orleans.
Emily Chapman [1:25]: Yeah, of course. We’re super excited for our awards ceremony. It’s kind of built over the last few months. We originally started with just the Electronic Circular Innovation Award, and we had such amazing feedback and participation in nominations that we knew we had to add a few more.
That first one is basically what it sounds like. It’s for innovators in the industry who have really been making waves in the last few years. If you’re in the e-scrap, ITAD or electronics reuse industry, you know it’s constantly changing, a lot of the time faster than most of us can keep up with. So it’s recognizing the hard work of the movers and shakers who have been making waves lately.
Then we added our Women’s RISE Award, which stands for Recognition for Inspiring Service and Empowerment. I particularly love this one as a younger woman in the industry. It can be a little intimidating sometimes, especially since this is my first year going to a lot of these conferences. I was really pleased to see that so many of the women nominated are the women who, my first time at the i-SIGMA conference or my first time at the E-Scrap Conference, really grabbed my hand, introduced me to people, showed me the way and gave me tons of advice. They really are active mentors in my life, and I’m sure in everybody else’s as well. So I’m super excited for that award.
And last but not least, we have our Billy Johnson Award. If you don’t know who Billy Johnson was, he was a tireless advocate for ReMA. He sadly passed away in 2024, just before that E-Scrap Conference. They recognized him at that conference, but we’ve always wondered when it would be time to really honor him and his legacy in an ongoing way. So we’re really excited for this one. It’s a Lifetime Achievement Award, so it recognizes someone’s whole career: not only what they’ve done, but what they’ve shepherded for future generations, since Billy was a huge advocate and mentor for people.
So those are our three awards. But everyone loves an awards show with a little pizzazz, so we’ve added a gong show, which you, Uriah, are our amazing host.
Uriah Kiser [4:09]: I’m excited. Matthew, have you ever seen the gong show?
Matthew Young [4:14]: I’ve seen clips of it before, yeah.
Uriah Kiser [4:17]: You and me both, because it was before our time. We’ve had these discussions internally, but I’m a Price Is Right guy. When I stayed home from school, I was definitely watching the yodeling game and Plinko, and obviously spinning the wheel. I had to go back and do some homework on the gong show because it was before my time, really. There was a movie with Sam Rockwell playing Chuck Barris as the host. I’ve never seen it. I should probably watch it at some point, probably when I get back, so it doesn’t get in my head before.
But what really got me was that these are just normal people with very unique talents, coming up and wanting to share their talents and have a good time. So Matthew, I’m putting you on the spot. You’re going to be our big contestant, right? You’ve signed up. You’re going to perform for us and we’re going to have some fun. What are you going to do for us? Come on.
Matthew Young [5:15]: Well, Maite originally asked me to be a background dancer for her act. And you can ask my wife: that is not the greatest use of my skills, or probably what anybody would want.
I’ve been in the industry for a while and I’ve had a lot of mentors. This actually started because when you talk to people over decades, they say the darndest things. One of our nominees for the Billy Johnson Award is a gentleman named Joe Clayton, who I’ve known for probably 15 or 16 years at this point. It started as the Joe Clayton Rules of Business. He would say some of these funny, off-the-wall things as we were talking, and at some point I started writing them down.
That then avalanched a little bit. Pretty much all of the people nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award have a rule of business that’s been written down at some point. Some come from my mentors. Some are serious, some are funny, and some are very industry-centric and only make sense if you’re in the ITAD and e-scrap space. I’m going to rapid-fire about 25 of the rules, and it should be pretty entertaining.
Uriah Kiser [6:47]: I like that. I like that. I don’t know how we’re going to gong that. Everybody’s going to be waiting to hear their line in the room. That’s why you’ve got to come to the awards ceremony, October 28th. It’s the final act of E-Scrap this year. That’s why you’ve got to come and see the gong show, that performance and many others we’re looking forward to, and of course see the awards given out.
I think one of the rules in all this is you have to be present to win. It’s like a raffle at a networking event: you have your ticket, they call your number, and you’re not there. The coveted prize goes to another number. You don’t want that. You want to be there for the award.
Emily Chapman [7:35]: Yeah. We love a remote worker, but we do not love a remote award recipient. So please come, so we can recognize you and celebrate you. You’ll have a lot of stories to come home with. It’s way easier to make a deal and work with someone you have a fun fact or hidden talent about than with someone whose business card was passed in the hallway. So I definitely recommend being there.
Uriah Kiser [8:00]: Yeah, 25 one-liners memorized by heart, recited at the gong show. Way better than a business card or somebody passing by. That is real connection, and that’s what you’re going to get in New Orleans.
Matthew’s new role and the nominees
Uriah Kiser [8:15]: Matthew, like I told you before we came on, I was doing some spying on you, and I’ve got your LinkedIn page here. You’re with Electronics Value Recovery, Inc. It says from January 2018 to October 2025, last year, you were president of the company. But then you decided presidents are for suckers, and you changed your title to chief revenue officer, which in my head is essentially the get-money guy. So many people aspire to be president, but you took it a step further. What’s behind this change?
Matthew Young [8:59]: At EVR, we’ve had some really big changes over the last 12 months. EVR started as me and my dog, Queso, who’s sitting right next to me now, in a pretty small garage on January 15, 2018. We sold the business last year on Halloween. The lawyer told me I was the only person who had ever shown up to a closing document signing in a costume. In the spirit of Halloween, we sold the business.
At that time, I was doing what we called “Matt’s hats”: a lot of different things across the organization. As we look to grow and scale, one person doing 15 different things really doesn’t work. My expertise is in bringing in the money, building relationships, and building markets for different materials, including reuse and refurbishing of that product. So I’m leading our sales organization, both inbound for material and all the different ways we monetize materials on the back end. I’m no longer the president. I’m the make-the-sales-team-run-fast money guy.
Uriah Kiser [10:28]: That’s how I’m going to refer to you. That’s how it is in my head.
Matthew Young [10:31]: It’s been a big adjustment: figuring out what you’re accountable for and what you’re not supposed to be accountable for. Seeing something and wanting to jump in and fix it, and instead letting other people run. It’s been a big growth area for me, and I’m trying to get better at it every day.
Uriah Kiser [10:50]: Congratulations on that move. I saw that and thought, very few people I’ve seen go from president to something else at the company. That’s pretty cool.
So, these awards. Emily, you’ve been working so hard to make them happen. We did a Resource Live a couple of weeks ago where we teased the Billy Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award. He made such an impact on so many people who come to this conference, based on the conversations we had on that podcast with [Adam Shine], Maite and others. Go to our YouTube page or resource-recycling.com to check that out.
These awards mean a lot to people in the industry. But I’m going to go with the old cliché: isn’t it good enough just to be nominated? Isn’t it cool just to have your name put forward for an award like this?
Emily Chapman [11:47]: Oh, absolutely. I still remember being nominated for a Rotary award when I was a sophomore in high school. It means so much, in such a big pool of people, to be thought of. At the end of the day, we all hope our name comes to mind when people think of something, especially something as incredible as being aligned with someone like Billy Johnson, being an impactful woman in the industry, or being in the top group of innovators. I think it’s really phenomenal to be nominated.
I also want to say that Matt has been on our steering committee for the conference as a whole, and he’s helped us a lot with shaping these awards. We’ve had a lot of input from our steering committee to make sure these awards are something people want and want to be associated with, and to recognize as many people as we can through our nomination process. It’s been really special. Everyone who’s been nominated responded immediately as soon as we told them, so I think people are really excited.
I wish we could just vote now and know, but I think it’s fun that we all get to be at the conference with the nominees the whole week. Voting closes at the end of Tuesday night, at 6 o’clock, right after the evening reception. So you have the week to find these people and maybe make them work a little for your vote. Get some advice, get a rule, and see what you think at the end of the week.
That’s also the benefit of them all being there. These aren’t just people you’ve heard of, seen on LinkedIn or heard on that podcast. These are people in our community doing the work and laying the foundations for future years.
Uriah Kiser [13:48]: Yeah, you’re right. These are your friends in the room. I’m going to go down the nominees right here.
For the Electronic Circular Innovation Award: Adam Shine, president, Sunnking Sustainable Solutions. Andrea Murphy, who was on this podcast, director of environmental affairs and sustainability at Panasonic. URT, represented by Ken Thomas, president of Universal Recycling Technologies. Jeff Gloyd, founder, Gloyd Recycling Solutions. And Kyle Wiens, co-founder and CEO of iFixit, who was also on this podcast. I feel like I know some of these people.
Well, Kyle wasn’t on the pod, but Matt Zieminski, who works at iFixit, was with us. He’s a West Coast guy too, out in Bend, Oregon. Shout-out to the West Coasters who have come on the podcast.
Now the Women’s RISE Award: Tricia Conroy, director, MRM Recycling. Selena Turnock, certification director, e-Stewards. Shannon Fertitta, executive director, RIOS. Kimberly Carol Stewart, executive director, Nebraska Recycling Council. And Jennifer Foxworthy, global head of sustainability of sales at Logitech. We had a great conversation on the podcast; her episode is coming up. She knew my mouse. I have a Logitech mouse, and we talked a lot about it. Riveting conversation. See, we can make mouse conversations interesting here on the Resource Recycling Podcast. That’s what we do.
And we’ve talked a lot about the Billy Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award: Craig Boswell, president of HOBI International. Joe Clayton, VP of business development at ARCOA. And Jim Levine, SVP at Iron Mountain.
Those are your nominees. As we just talked about, we know most if not all of them, and you’ll get to see them at E-Scrap this month. If you haven’t got your plane ticket, your reservation, or committed to coming, having fun with us, meeting everyone and going to the awards ceremony with the gong show included, what are you waiting for?
The nomination process and New Orleans
Matthew Young [16:13]: Let’s do it. I can tell you, Billy Johnson definitely has a couple of rules of business we’ll be reading as well. Some of his are very profound. All three of the gentlemen nominated for the lifetime award are people I’ve known for over a decade, and they’ve always been incredibly generous with their time. I’ve held industry leadership as chair of the ReMA (formerly ISRI) Electronics Division, and all three are just awesome people. It’s great to see that list of nominees.
Uriah Kiser [16:46]: Great list. Emily, how did we get that list? What goes into deciding who the nominees are?
Emily Chapman [16:53]: It was a pretty democratic process, I have to say. We put out nomination forms and voting forms. The Electronic Circular Innovation Award went out a little earlier in the summer, and the Women’s RISE and Billy Johnson awards went out at the same time, I want to say around early August.
Again, we had an incredible turnout. We didn’t really know what to expect. In the back of our heads we thought, maybe we’ll have to nominate some people. But no, these were all really from our industry. Our peers nominated all of them. For the Electronic Circular Innovation Award, we had so many nominees that we held a second round of voting to narrow it down.
I think we ended up with the perfect set, spread across the industry. Every little nook and cranny is represented on this list. We really appreciate everybody’s input and participation in that process. Next year, we hope to have even more. It can only grow from here.
Uriah Kiser [18:04]: All right, this is so cool. I’m so excited. Lightning round. As you know, this is my first time going to New Orleans, period. Not only are there all the conference things we mentioned, there are other things like pickleball. We’re going to play pickleball. This is how we roll. And we’re going to have a parade from the Grand Hyatt down to the French Quarter.
Matthew Young [18:37]: That sounds awesome.
Uriah Kiser [18:39]: Both of you have been there before, right? Lightning round: best beignet. Emily, you go first.
Emily Chapman [18:55]: I think [Loretta’s]. It’s an early-morning walk down, get my coffee, go see the river. It’s a nice morning. You can’t go wrong in New Orleans. Maybe you could at a two-star hotel serving them for breakfast, but anywhere else, no. They’re not serving beignets at the Red Roof Inn. They’re just not doing it.
Uriah Kiser [19:21]: Okay, so [Loretta’s]. And Matthew, what’s your pick?
Matthew Young [19:25]: Café du Monde.
Uriah Kiser [19:27]: Classic. Café du Monde. Fantastic. Next: best sight, the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in the French Quarter.
Emily Chapman [19:38]: Last time we were there, in June, we got to go to a really small venue and watch a jazz performance. That was really cool. It was in the French Quarter, right next to Pat O’Brien’s, which is where we’ll be ending our parade. Definitely check showtimes if you can. It’s pretty incredible. All of the musicians there are amazing.
Matthew Young [20:07]: I definitely like Pat O’Brien’s. We’ve always had a lot of fun there. You can get a hurricane and split it with your table. But my favorite is that a lot of the bars have a second floor. You can go up, watch, maybe throw beads, talk to people and see all the craziness happening on Bourbon Street. It’s a lot of fun.
Uriah Kiser [20:30]: All right, last lightning round: best takeaway. Maybe it’s a conversation you had, something you learned, or a relationship you made during the conference.
Emily Chapman [20:44]: My first thought when you said “takeaway” was food.
Uriah Kiser [20:51]: There you go. Good food at the conference.
Matthew Young [20:57]: For me, it’s kind of like old home week. It’s like homecoming, honestly. You talk to hundreds of people in your network throughout the year, but you get to see everybody in one place, including coworkers you worked with a decade ago. I often say the faces stay the same, even if the badges change a little. It’s very much the same cast of characters, and once you get into this industry, it’s hard to leave. So I’m really excited for the homecoming feel and seeing hundreds of people I’ve gotten to know over the last two decades.
Uriah Kiser [21:40]: Well, you’re going to get to see them again, and we’re going to get to meet all of you in person. I can’t wait.
[inaudible]
Uriah Kiser [22:09]: This is great. I look forward to doing more of these Resource Live conversations with you guys and with more of the industry, because it’s a great way to connect and talk about what we’re all doing. If you want more conversations like this and want to stay informed about what’s happening at Resource Recycling, please like this video, share it, and hit the bell notification and subscribe buttons so you know when we’re talking about ITAD and e-scrap. I’m Uriah Kaiser. We’ll see you on the next Resource Recycling Podcast. Thanks.
Matthew Young / Emily Chapman [22:40]: Thanks.
