We started with a question: “what is really happening to the world’s stockpiles of unwanted and obsolete electronic goods?”
This simple question uncovered a complex and shocking reality that was the catalyst for our founders to make a difference.
In 2017, our CEO Anthony Karam saw the enormous e-waste landfill dumps in Africa. What started as a curiosity soon became a burning need to do something that could really do good.
At the same time, he was exposed to emerging, but mostly untested, new technologies aimed at solving complex challenges.
These experiences ignited a passion and kickstarted an investigation into what was really happening with the world’s stockpile of e-waste.
What he found was shocking. It’s growing exponentially. Very little is recycled. Estimates indicate almost 80% ends up in landfill or is burned off. The environmental leeching and toxic emissions are killing people and the planet.
So, along with a small band of curious and dedicated individuals, they started to think about, what if we could do better? What would it take? What would it look like? How could we do it? And ultimately, why wouldn’t we? We needed to think outside the circle.
This challenge is so enormous, it affects every corner of the planet, and no one anywhere had an end-to-end solution. E-waste recycling involved manual dismantling, removal of just a few valuable commodities and an enormous amount of product going into the ground.
After six years, tens of millions invested in R&D and equipment, months spent travelling the world, false starts, failed attempts, and thousands of questions, the Sircel team has done what many thought along the journey was impossible – developed an end-to-end solution with the first plant operating right here in Australia and a growing capacity to expand across the globe.
Sircel’s capability now includes the highest standards of mechanical processing of whole devices, multi-stage size reduction and separation and highly sophisticated metals recovery processes.
Sircel Limited is the parent company and Sircel Recycling Pty Ltd is the entity operating our main sites. We now have six sites across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.