Zagrous Kawarizadeh - Why Recycling Old Tech Isn't as Simple as It Seems

[00:00:00] Adam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire.

[00:00:21] Adam: And I'm so glad to be here alongside Dominique, the sustainability expert. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact of the job, work community, and did something about it.

[00:00:30] Dominique: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to show their stories and plant some new ideas.

[00:00:39] Adam: So today, Dominique and I are joined by Zagrous Kawarizadeh. He's the president of Columbus Micro Systems, which specializes in IT hardware, IT recycling, and managed services.

Last time, we got to hear from Zagrous's around IT recycling, kind of a high level 101. And we talked a lot about data privacy, what it actually means and why it's important for people who are recycling their electronics. Today we're gonna dig deeper into the complexities of technology recycling as we discuss Zagrous's green champion story. So Zagrous, welcome back. 

[00:01:09] Zagrous: Yeah, it's good to be back. 

[00:01:10] Dominique: I'm so excited to jump in. I'm just, there's so much more I wanna ask you about.

[00:01:14] Adam: It's a very curious topic. So, can you remind our listeners how long have you been in your role and what's the biggest change that you've seen so far?

[00:01:22] Zagrous: Been in my role as the president of Columbus Micro Systems for, approaching seven years now, seven years in September, and took over the family business. I'm a second generation family business owner. As of September, yeah, that'll be my third year. So I'm pretty excited by that.

[00:01:35] Adam: And how long has Columbus Micro Systems been around?

[00:01:38] Zagrous: We've been around since 1988. So that's 36 years, which in computer years is, we were there in the beginning, so it's been a long time.

[00:01:46] Adam: And as we were talking about in the previous one, that was predates CompuServe here in Columbus. It goes back to my Commodore 64 days. So quite a lot has changed. 

[00:01:56] Dominique: I'm curious to get your take, like is this side of the technology world as it grows, talked about enough? And if not, why not?

[00:02:03] Zagrous: Oh, that's a great question. I don't think it's talked about enough. I do speaking engagements at Goodwill Columbus, they have a program called CompTIA, which sets up people who have very unorthodox tech backgrounds to get into the technology field. And when I entered those, when I started speaking to those cohorts, a lot of the people at my company actually come through that cohort. They're a graduate of that program. I bring up to them. When you talk about IT, that's the same thing as saying, "Oh, I'm interested in cars." Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you wanna fix cars? Does it mean you want to drive cars? Do you want to paint cars? Do you wanna troubleshoot cars? Does it mean you wanna design them? What does that mean? And so IT is the same thing. 

So with where we're at as a company, our focus is IT recycling. Our focus is managed services. And our focus is IT hardware. So, our ideal customer for us is buying a computer from us, recycling their old computer from us, and then having that computer managed by us. And when I say customer, in that sense, I'm talking about an enterprise, a business. This is a company that needs a bespoke custom piece of equipment.

You know, if my sister wanted to buy a computer from us, I would not suggest buying it from us because IT equipment has become a commodity. IT hardware has become a commodity so we work more on the custom configured bespoke pieces of equipment. 

[00:03:18] Dominique: And when you say managed services, what does that mean?

[00:03:21] Zagrous: The example I give is, a dentist just knows about teeth. That's all they are familiar with. If their keyboard stops working, if their phone stops working, if their internet's down, they need to call someone. In this instance, that's us. So a managed service company is a company that just based off you know, every month, for example, our customers will pay a retainer, and then we will ultimately be their IT department for that month. 

And we enter into contracts with them and there's service level agreements but this is a very new business model for us. The reason this business even exists at all is because we had a gentleman at the company who was 70 years old, that was three years ago. He was 70 years old. And he told me, he's thinking about retiring. And I was like, finally. But no, but really, I was excited. was happy, I was happy for him. I was happy for him. And one of the things I realized in the example, the analogy I gave to the VP of the company is that, this person was doing a lot of break/fix work. The break/fix work in our IT space is, you're a firefighter, you're getting a phone call when things aren't working and you're going there to fix them. And so he has all of these customers that are break/fix customers of his, that if we didn't fill that roll up and if we didn't come up with what's ultimately the MSPs, a proactive solution, then we were gonna lose those customers. I give the analogy of it being like a, having a very, very wealthy uncle who you inherit 40 Italian stallions from. What do you know about horses? So you have to figure out a solution there, and that's really what it is for the break/fix. 

[00:04:45] Dominique: The demand came first? 

[00:04:46] Zagrous: The demand came first.

[00:04:47] Dominique: They were looking for support in that area, and you had one wonderful star pupil who was offering it, and on his roll off, you built this additional service arm?

[00:04:57] Zagrous: Exactly. So with this company being 36 years old, when I joined the company, there were three people at the company that had been there for over 20 years. The VP has been there approaching 31 years. He's actually, I think he just had his 31st year in June. And so this was one of the third oldest people at the company. He's been there the longest. And so when he was looking at semi-retirement, retirement, it became one of those things where we had to build a solution. And this kind of goes back to like I never thought five years ago that I'd ever be doing this or even be talking this way about managed services and creating this proactive solution for companies. Never even crossed my mind. But the need existed. The problem existed and we came up with a solution. And so far, the last two years it's been awesome. The transition has been fantastic. But that's what we do: managed services, IT hardware and IT recycling.

[00:05:43] Dominique: I'm just curious 'cause obviously that that's added value in general, just from being so helpful in a what can be a really complicated space for a lot of people, and the urgency of when you're having a problem, you need that fixed. 

But I'm curious, like just is there a sustainability touch point to that too? Do you think that you're also increasing the longevity of some of these devices by being there to help support and keep them working?

[00:06:05] Zagrous: Exactly. A lot of managed services, come into a company, look at their material, look at their assets, their IT assets, look at them, kind of make a, you know, shake their head and say, "gotta get rid of all of this. And gotta get all the new stuff." And it's gotta be the nicest stuff. And it's gotta look this way and it's gotta be this brand, it's gotta be this price point. We don't do that. And the reason we don't do that is because we have access to so many assets that are refurbished. So we go and tap into our IT recycling pool and we trust the warranty on those devices. And we can offer those devices to some of our clients who sometimes are cash strapped, those clients are nonprofits, those clients are social enterprises, we're able to offer them affordable IT management because of the fact that our assets, the actual IT equipment is actually very affordable because it's in the secondary market. It's a refurbished piece of equipment. 

[00:06:52] Dominique: On the sustainability side, what do you wish people understood about sustainability when it comes to IT recycling?

[00:06:58] Zagrous: I think the most important part about sustainability within IT recycling or really just IT in general, is the fact that this material, you have to have stewardship when you're getting rid of it. If you're getting rid of a keyboard, you cannot just go put it in the trash, right? Like it's a piece of plastic. You should be considering, you should think about what's happening with that piece of equipment. 

One of the biggest pieces of IT equipment that we actually get that I wouldn't call IT equipment, but it's a part of it, it's an externality, is batteries. We get so many batteries. there are so few companies in town that can actually handle them. And so we take them in and, with those batteries, specifically the lithium polymer batteries.

So think about those videos of like an iPhone that's, you know, bulging or like a MacBook that's bulging, that's a bomb. That's a, that's a, that's an actual grenade. Because if that gets punctured, if that ends up expanding, that will catch on fire. you cannot put it out with a fire extinguisher. You cannot put it out with water. You have to let it burn. It has to burn out. So at our facility, for example, we have sodium bicarbonate baking soda in sand. We have five gallon drums of that in the event of a fire. Because of the fact that we get so much of this material and a lot of what we do at our company is educating our clients.

 This is a huge talking point because people are taking those bloated lithium batteries and they're putting them in the trash. Where does that end up? That ends up in a garbage truck, and that garbage truck is gonna crush it and catch on fire. So whenever you see a garbage truck on fire, 99% of the time, that's a lithium battery that's caught on fire. It's the reason why you can't take lithium batteries on planes if they're bloated. That's a fire hazard. 

 I encourage everyone to find an R2 facility or to use a waste authority or to contact a waste center to find the proper channels to get rid of some of their equipment because it's so key that they do that.

[00:08:44] Dominique: So can you share just a little bit of like what unresponsible recycling looks like? What are some of the bad things that happen?

[00:08:50] Zagrous: Unresponsible recycling is companies who lack stewardship, who are getting rid of the material. So oftentimes they're treating this waste as a cash cow, and they're not going through the proper due diligence of making sure that the material is ending up in the proper channel. They're not going through the proper due diligence and making sure that a customer's data is wiped from the device.

They're not going through the proper due diligence of when they're getting rid of the material, when they're ultimately selling the material online. I'm sure everyone has been a victim of this, someone is selling something and you realize, "Oh, this was refurbished. Oh, this was actually used."

I actually just bought it used whatever I just bought. So it's a lack of stewardship and a lack of due diligence on receiving the material, wiping the material, and where the material ultimately ends up. Whether it ends up in a landfill, which is something that we do not do, or whether it ends up in a customer's hands when they purchased a device thinking it was new, when in reality it absolutely was not.

[00:09:46] Dominique: And I wanna get a sense of just like how big, I think you obviously are so responsible about all the touch points from your company. if when I picture your business, I'm picturing like funnels to you guys from a material point of view and then a big web that comes out from you of all these different components that go to different places because of like they're a commodity. They can be purchased and utilized by them, or because of safety concerns, they go somewhere else. How big is that web? Like can you give us a mental image of how many like strings kind of come out from your business?

[00:10:16] Zagrous: what that web looks like is there's the up and there's the down. So the up is the customer, where the material's coming from. The down for us is, it's tough to say. It depends. On one hand, we have wholesale opportunities.

[00:10:29] Dominique: Like I'm picturing like 20, is it more than that?

[00:10:32] Zagrous: So that's the tough part. When it comes to wholesale opportunities, we probably have anywhere between 15 to 50 different wholesale opportunities where they're buyers. And some of these buyers, I'm aware of who these buyers are. I'm like, "Oh, I'm selling to this person." They're aggregating it because they're selling it to a school in, maybe a third world country. They use the LCD screens. They go, they send them to a third world country. They'll adapt them and they'll turn it into a television, right? Good for them. 

On the flip side, we sell material on the retail side as well, so we're selling refurbished devices through eBay. We're selling refurbished devices through Amazon, so a lot of people. A great example is gaming. It's crazy to think about how large gaming has become in this industry, but we sell gaming computers. These gaming computers are affordably priced. Whereas if you were to get an intro gaming computer right now, easy, a thousand dollars, easy, thousands of dollars.

You know, we're approaching it from, "Hey, why don't we use refurbished components and then sell some of the refurbished components with new components, and someone can enter this marketplace and get their first gaming PC for $500, for an affordable price?" Whereas if you bought it all new, it might be cost prohibitive to you. So when you're talking about that web, there's thick webs, there's small thin webs, it's a really, it's a tough answer to say where all the material ends up, but it comes in and it goes out. And really it depends on the seasonality of the time of year as well.

[00:11:51] Dominique: I was just curious 'cause I feel like that speaks to the complexity that you've been willing to manage responsibly, because that's a lot to keep track of as a business owner, of all the different places, all these different commodities and materials are going. So I was just curious to give us an idea of like, truly the scale of what you're managing and why it's probably very tempting to be not responsible manager when you're a, you know, a bad egg in this industry.

[00:12:16] Zagrous: Whenever I'm hiring someone, I often tell them that if we were a restaurant, I want you to see where the cows we sell in the burgers. I want you to see what kind of grass they eat. I want you to see what farm they're at. I want you to see what they're doing when they're doing it, whatever they're doing. So for us, it's like farm to table. I want everyone to understand at my company, this is what it looks like when we sell a new device. This is what it looks like when we're refurbishing a device. This is what the warehouse does. This is what the warehouse staff does. This is the warehouse manager. So everyone in my company is aware of all elements of the company. And that's kind of why it's easy for me to have all of these to your earlier question webs, is because we're able to move material, because I'm not facilitating a number of those relationships, very few of those relationships ultimately end up going and involving me. A lot of those relationships happen through the project managers at our company. And with it being a 36-year-old company, delegation is a new concept. Uh, my, you know. My father, 

I know subtweeting my father. But really my, like my father was like central to everything that happened at the company before. And now it's much more through delegation. There's, you know, there are conversations, but I absolutely, I would lose sleep if I was involved in every decision that people in the company made. And I actively tell them to make a decision without me because I'm trusting of their judgement.

[00:13:32] Dominique: And just to clarify for this episode,Zag's dad founded Columbus Micro Systems in its origins, so if we did not mention that in this episode, that is why that was a slight roast on his dad.

[00:13:43] Zagrous: Yeah. Yeah. He'll love that. 

[00:13:47] Dominique: Something else I've heard you talk about. I've heard you mention the accessibility side of what you do and that you care about that. And I wanna ask you what you find most fulfilling in the work that you do. But I'd love for you to also to explain how the role of accessibility in what you think you're bringing to this space on top of just recycling material.

[00:14:05] Zagrous: Yeah. So for us, accessibility is so important. For us, the material we're receiving oftentimes still has value. We call it remarketable value in the industry. We can take that device, refurbish the device, and put it in the hands of someone at a cost that isn't gonna break the bank for them. It's a cost that for a lot of people who are priced out of purchasing a brand new, top of the line laptop. They shouldn't be prohibited from having a device at their home. They should not be prohibited from being able to access email or to just watch YouTube videos or to do anything because of the fact that it's too cost prohibited because there's so many devices. And so for us, when we're receiving those refurbished pieces of equipment, when we're receiving the equipment and we're refurbishing it, a goal for us is to put in the hands of some of those people. And a lot of the work that we're trying to do, I would shout out Smart Columbus in the fact that we share vision in that regard. It's a really incredible thing to think that it's 2024 and there are people who don't have access to a laptop. That's crazy. I cannot fathom that existence of being in high school and I have to use the school library to complete assignments. I cannot fathom that. 

And that's kind of what drives the company in terms of getting devices in the hands of students. We were just talking about COVID, you know, our business during COVID. We were working during COVID, and the reason why we were working, because the clients that we have were using Chromebooks. Well, the Chromebooks for school districts was the lifeblood of how they were allowing students to access the internet, access their classes, access, you know, the access to their teachers. And they're sending us these Chromebooks from students and the supply chain was so affected they could not find Chromebooks. So our staff was working tirelessly during this time, both sourcing parts, looking into refurbished equipment, but basically getting into the hands of the students that needed those devices 'cause it was the only way that they were going to stay in school and still learn was either refurbishing the devices or even just servicing this, the Chromebooks that we had already sold them. So our company really in its origin is we are a steward to our customer. We are a steward to the people that are in our community.

So, yeah. I do find it like very challenging for me when I think about the fact that there are people that we walk past in the street, in the city and wherever we might be, who don't have the same access to the internet that I do. 

[00:16:22] Dominique: And you had a number for that. What was the number for how many people don't have access?

[00:16:25] Zagrous: The number of people who don't have access, and I would say Marcus from Smart Columbus would know better than I would, but the number of people who don't have access to a device at home is 40,000. The number of people who don't have access to the internet is 80,000 in Columbus. That's insane. 

[00:16:41] Dominique: And you're lowering the barriers as a company to making those things an option.

[00:16:45] Zagrous: Exactly.

[00:16:46] Adam: When you think about the future for Columbus Micro Systems, what's your vision for the things that you'd like to tackle?

[00:16:51] Zagrous: I think the big one for the company would be in the future, to get more involved in E-waste. More involved in precious metal recovery. So a fun little fact is that, you know, we've been involved with Batel, we've been involved with the Department of Energy in terms of accessing rare earth metals inside of circuit boards.

So the little colorful chips inside of a circuit board actually carry rare earth metals, hard drives, not SSDs hard drives, so those are the big, blocky ones, have a magnet inside of them. And that is a rare earth metal. And so where I see the company going is tapping into this niche marketplace in getting access to these rare earth metals.

And I understand this is a sustainability podcast, but the reason I draw attention to that is the fact that these rare earth metals are rare, but they also are located off the coast of Japan, a mile in the ocean. And these are rare earth metals that we use in MRI machines. These are rare earth metals that we use in healthcare technology.

And I think that it's frankly a bit concerning to me that we don't domestically have a way to get access to these rare earth metals and instead have to opt into using Southeast Asian or Asian countries to access those rare earth metals. So my long-term, 10, 20 year vision of the company is getting more into precious metal recovery, 

[00:18:06] Dominique: And you shared last time your impact was at 800 tons.

[00:18:10] Zagrous: Yeah.

[00:18:10] Dominique: How frequently are you going through that much? 

[00:18:12] Zagrous: We're going through that per year.

[00:18:13] Dominique: Okay, so 800 tons per year, and I'm just really curious, like, what can other people learn from what you've done? So when thinking about just like communities broadly, in the nation, on the whole planet, like what do you think is kind of the secret sauce of why you've been so successful at upping the amount of material you're processing and making sure that these materials are recovered and utilized properly. 

What do you think has been such a powerful piece of your success that others can learn from? Because I think what you're doing is, is really important and it's a problem everywhere?

[00:18:46] Zagrous: I think it's a problem everywhere, and I don't think enough people are tackling the problem. I think that that's part of it. I think the reason our business has been around for 36 years is that the people at our company take our customers really seriously. There's a such a serious emphasis on stewardship to the people that we work with decide to do their recycling with us, the municipalities, the universities, the government agencies.

 I made the joke just now, but like,

[00:19:10] Dominique: I would be willing to drink a glass of sand for the customers that do IT recycling with our company. And the reason why is because of like how much we care about what we do, it's such a tough question to answer honestly, Dom, because of the fact that I don't think enough people are in the space. I actually don't think enough companies are tackling this problem. 

I'm concerned. I honestly, this has made me so concerned of like how many organizations just have no plan for the output of their electronics and how many of them are just dumping them into a big dumpster and then calling for an extra service that week.

[00:19:39] Zagrous: So, that's a concern of mine. I think that that's what's probably most common for customers or companies is that they have a guy with a pickup truck that comes and picks their material. Who is he? Yeah. I love that. It's a handshake agreement with some fella, and that's cool, right? So I have so little concerns about like competition in this space. I wish more people took this seriously. I wish more people were educated. I think that we're seeing more punitive punishment coming from Congress and different lawmakers when it comes to the lack of stewardship around customer data.

You're seeing that through, I mean, it's very, "A hack. PlayStation was hacked. This got hacked." That's cute and fun and like, that's a fun. You know Chiron? Yeah. 

Well, well, it's 'cause it's because that's all software, like, software is like fun and cool and like. What about hardware? 

But you're telling me this hard drive that has sensitive information on it is less important? That's crazy to me. I think it's just being in the space that I'm in and seeing it recycling the way that we do, which is from a hardware lens, it's equally important as software. I think a lot of people go, "Uh-oh, this got hacked again."

[00:20:45] Dominique: And it's like, that's still a risk in your hardware when you're dropping off your phone because you're like, it's done. I no longer need my phone. You should be wiping your phone. You should be factory resetting your phone before you drop it off at a recycling facility, including my own. It's just best practice. It's nothing to do with trust, or you should just best practice factory reset your devices. You should at best practice erase data because it's just a point of failure. I just wanna kind of take what you just said and give us a little action. So you just shared there's just an opportunity for people to get more educated. Where do you recommend someone like me who learned a lot about the awareness of technology and the fact that there's such a big footprint after I'm done with it. How can people learn more about like what their options are and be more educated in this space? 

Like I don't feel like I'm someone who's like super knowledgeable about like technology or computer science. I have engineering background so I like, can handle a tough topic, but like a lot of this was new to me. And like, I'm trying to think of like how would you recommend someone just becomes a more active, educated member of the problem 'cause they're a part of the problem. 

[00:21:48] Zagrous: I worked at Symantec in Mountain View, and Symantec has become a different company now as software companies do the rebrand. But at Symantec, like one of the things I was pointing out to the question about education, like how do I learn more about cybersecurity? How do I learn more about best practices? And it's really crazy to me that I have something in my pocket right now that I can access all human information ever. Right? I can tell you what the temperature of the sun is right now, but no one taught me how to use it. No one taught me anything about encryption. No one taught me anything about my data governance. No one taught me a single iota about it. And before we used to have classes about like how this is how you make bread and this is how you use a hammer and nail. But we just like gave people access to this like tool that is just,

[00:22:34] Dominique: And honestly, I remember taking a typing class.

[00:22:36] Zagrous: Me too.

[00:22:37] Dominique: But I feel like it for some reason ended there. We learned how to type on the computer, but not really what was happening at the heart of it.

[00:22:43] Zagrous: It's crazy to me that people don't understand that what they put online. We are so far behind when compared to Europe. Europe has something called GDPR. So GDPR for them is if you have a Facebook account and you're like a French citizen, you can ask Facebook, "Hey. I want to see all the data you have on me," and Facebook has a set period of time they have to produce that data for you. 

Facebook and Google were hit with massive billion dollar, billion dollar fines because they weren't able to follow GDPR. California has just recently released a California Data Privacy Act, which is, that's a step in the right direction. But again, when it comes down to it like people don't understand, like if you put something online, if you write a tweet, if you post the picture on Instagram, if you write a nasty email, that exists forever. Period. a leader in this and it's crazy. It's this country. The country? Estonia. Anything you post on Estonia online as an Estonian citizen, you own it. So you can just be like, "I wanna take this picture down." So if a restaurant posts a picture of you, you know, having a lemon cello outside you, "I don't want that picture of me online." You own that picture. They'll take it down. Legally, they have to take it down.

Well, Zagrous, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been such a delight just going through, you know, what you do with Columbus Micro Systems and how you approach taking equipment and what you do with it.

[00:24:00] Adam: So thank you so much for sharing that. How can people connect with your company and recycle the goods with you?

[00:24:06] Zagrous: People can visit our website, columbusmicro.com. And if anyone has any IT recycling questions or any questions regarding IT hardware or managed services, you can call in using our information on our website. We're also open nine to five for walk-in IT recycling. So if you have a TV, a printer, some electronic piece of equipment that's computer related, CDs, whatever it might be, we are open to the public from nine to five, Monday through Friday for people to walk in with devices to recycle them.

[00:24:36] Dominique: I just wanna add, like, thank you so much for this chat. I learned, I'm sure maybe Adam learned a little less than I did because he came in with a head start, but I learned so much about, frankly, waste stream, I don't think that I've focused my eyes on before. And I really appreciate how much you've done in this space, how accountable you are for every step.

 you're building such a needed outlet for what's gonna be a growing problem. So thanks for what you do.

[00:24:58] Zagrous: My pleasure.

[00:24:59] Adam: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:25:10] Dominique: You can find our episodes at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you have questions for us about either climate change or sustainability, you can reach us on our website, thegreenchampions.com. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be digging into our sustainability success story in our next episode. 

​