E-Waste Recycling is Important to Us at IT Radix

You may have noticed a theme in our newsletters for 2024 about 1‑Hit Wonders and their hit songs. As we enter April, one of the months where IT Radix heavily promotes e‑recycling, we got to thinking about hit songs that have been “recycled.” In the music industry, they call that a cover song—a reinterpretation of an existing hit song.

The list of songs that have been recycled or covered is really quite long. Stacker.com is a website that covers the art, music, and culture world. They undertook a very comprehensive analysis of a music database encompassing over 650,000 songs and over 215,000 artists. They have developed a list of the Top 50 “recycled” songs of all time. Interestingly, ten of them are Holiday/Christmas tunes which makes a lot of sense—numerous artists over time recycle the classics. While 41% are tunes performed by The Beatles…a testament to their artistic prowess.

The most “covered/recycled” tune of them all has been redone over 422 times according to that database. It is “Yesterday”…a song penned by Paul McCartney that almost did not get produced because Paul found it too easy to write, thinking he must have stolen it from someone else. Other major non-Beatles tunes at the top of the list include “Summertime” dating back to 1935 (243 covers), “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (167 covers), and “Ain’t No Sunshine” (148 covers).

IT Radix Offers Free E-Waste Recycling to Our Clients All Year Long

That is a lot of tune recycling! We emphasize recycling for many reasons including the fact that one of the IT Radix core values is “Giving Back.” We believe it is that important. We live out that value in many ways and one way we have done so for many years is to encourage ourselves and our clients to buy sustainable products across the board and to recycle as much as possible. All year long we invite our valued clients to drop off accepted end-of-life devices at our office so that they can be recycled, leveraging the work done by Green Vision Inc. In the months of April and November, we make a special effort to promote recycling.

The Benefits of E-Waste Recycling to our Global Communities Are Many

As it relates to recycling e‑waste such as computer hardware etc., the benefits to our local and global communities are many:

• Saves Non-renewable Resources:  Every time we recycle a PC, a watch, e‑reader, TV, calculator, appliances etc., we reduce the need for mining new raw materials. One ton of circuit boards is estimated to contain 40 to 800 times more gold than one metric ton of ore.
• Reduces Pollution and Costs:  Mining new raw materials causes a ton of pollution as toxic dust rises and pollution is created in refining. Additionally, in electronics production, the most expensive parts are those that require mining. So, the more gold, silver, copper, palladium, lead that is recycled, the lower the costs of production.
• Prevents Landfill Growth:  Which means less toxins in landfills and less chance of toxic materials leeching as materials decay.
• Protects Clean Water and Promotes Healthy Living:  Recycling lessens the amount of potential downstream problems from heavy metals reaching ground water.

Reach out to us anytime you’d like to recycle your aged computer hardware. A complete list of accepted items can be found at:  www.it-radix.com/recycling.

First published in our April 2024 IT Radix Resource newsletter