C A S E S T U D Y

Is your sustainable recycling process as cheap as traditional methods like incineration or using harsh chemicals?

Yes, it is. The cost to get our process to where it is today has been immense, with a huge amount of money spent on research and development. However, the running costs of incinerators and processing with caustic acids are also very expensive. Our economic model is very strong, and once we reach scale, I am confident that we will be on par with or even cheaper than current methods.

The only real difference is that incineration is instant, whereas our bio-process takes a little more time to complete. But once we’ re at an industrial scale, that won’ t matter.

WE ARE NOW CAMPAIGNING WITH THE UK GOVERNMENT TO REPATRIATE OUR OWN PRECIOUS RESOURCES.

Are data centres more focused on growth and capacity than on sustainability and recycling?

That’ s a great question, as I’ ve been on both sides of this. When we were running a fast-growing data centre business, we were completely focused on selling space. To be honest, we were quite one-eyed about it. We did, however, become the first in the UK to use green energy, but that was primarily because of the electrical infrastructure we had in place.

The market is currently experiencing huge growth, and companies are focused on increasing their shareholder value. However, things are changing. I’ m in talks with some of the major customers we had in our old data centre business. They are having very serious conversations with us about building dedicated recycling plants using our BioTech process. The idea is for them to bring all of their global waste to a central location, like a seaport in America, rather than shipping it in containers to be incinerated or processed with acids. This shows that the biggest players are starting to take notice and want to implement more sustainable solutions.

Why do UK data centre companies send their electronic waste overseas when it could be processed better here?

You’ re right, it does seem crazy. It’ s even worse than you think. This country, and much of the Western world, has essentially been giving away its valuable resources for decades. We’ ve been shipping our waste, which contains valuable metals like copper, gold and platinum, to places like China, India and Japan. They then profit from these resources, while we lose them.

This is a real issue, and it’ s one of the reasons we started our business. We are now campaigning with the UK government to repatriate our own precious resources. It’ s a huge opportunity to bring industry back to the UK and stop exporting our valuable assets. This has become even more important due to current world tensions. Materials recovery is crucial for our national security and can also boost our economy.

We’ re finding that there’ s a real appetite for this. Not only are we talking to major UK companies in the data centre and telecoms sectors, but we’ re also having conversations with other industries. These companies are very conscientious about their environmental impact and want to keep these resources onshore. �

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