With roots firmly planted in the ground, a vision for a greener future and a mission to eradicate e-waste, refurbed is one of the 4 companies welcomed aboard the Lauder Business School´s inter-disciplinary strato-flight project. Achieved in partnership with TU Wien Space Team and K-Sat Stuttgart, and scheduled for 17 July, the project aims to send a weather balloon-carried device fully geared to collect environmental data into the stratosphere.
As one of the fastest growing marketplaces for renewed products in German-speaking countries, refurbed is the quintessential sustainable business of the 21st century: they address the ever-looming problem of e-waste.
Counteracting E-Waste one refurbished device at a time
Do you remember the 2008 Disney-Pixar animated film WALL-E and its sweet eponymous character responsible for cleaning a waste-covered Earth? Well, in the start-up world, refurbed would be the equivalent.
The Vienna-based marketplace provides the perfect solution to prevent an eventual e-wasteland. Over the course of the past 5.5 years, refurbed has built a product portfolio of over 18.000 products that are sold via trusted merchants, which have to operate according to strict merchant criteria. This guarantees certain quality and sustainability standards. This way, consumers are connected with merchants and demands meets sustainable supply. The devices are not only up to 40% cheaper, but also 100% more environmentally friendly than their brand-new counterparts.
According to the Global E-waste Monitor 2020 report, in 2019 alone the world generated 53.6 million metric tons (Mt) of electronic waste. The World Counts – an online provider of environmental awareness facts – roughly equates this with throwing away 800 laptops per second.
Even Germany, despite being heralded as the “Recycling World Champion”, only properly recycled around 721,000t of electronic waste, compared to 1.9 million tons of electrical appliances put into circulation in 2015.
In Austria, the yearly count of electrical and electronic devices put into circulation amounts to about 180,000 tons. About 80,000 of those are collected each year and recycled according to a legally-compliant, environmentally-friendly process.
With the mission of reducing both e-waste and CO2 impact, refurbed was founded – and has since then successfully built their marketplace. When asked what determined their participation, they stated that “Innovation has always been a key driver for our business, so when we heard about the project, we wanted to be part of it immediately. At refurbed, any action that drives awareness for a better future is one that we want to support. Furthermore, we firmly believe that we can only change the world if we all come together – and this is a testimony to togetherness for a cause we all support: our earth.”
A tree for each device sold
refurbed’s climate-positive actions do not end at just retailing refurbished e-products. To reduce the carbon footprint even further, they plant a tree for every device sold. With over 1.8 million devices sold so far, equally as many trees have been planted in collaboration with local and global partners such as Eden Reforestation and others.
Lauder Business School is proud to partner with refurbed on the strato-flight project and we hope that this cooperation will mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
For more information on refurbed´s mission, vision and strategy, head over to nachhaltigkeit.refurbed.com and explore refurbed.de. And if you have outdated devices collecting dust in your drawers, now is the time to take action and #begreentogether!
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