Closing the Loop

We envision a world where all new products are born from recycled material.

Globally, 32B lbs of clothing and 97B lbs of electronics end up in landfill. 97B lbs of electronics in landfill is equivalent to burying 27M cars! In the US, clothing and electronics waste have doubled since 2000, to the point where it now costs US cities over $500M every year in landfill fees (not to mention contributing greenhouse gases and leaching toxic chemicals into our groundwater).

By recycling with Retrievr, you’re taking a big step toward solving this problem. Up to now, 85% of clothing and electronics wind up in landfill, despite the fact that nearly all of it can be reused, renewed, or recycled. Retrievr makes it easy for you to part with your items with a convenient pickup right at your doorstep; we then route your items down one of these three paths:

Reuse

Our ideal path extends the life of your unwanted items ‘as-is’ by finding them a new home. Usually, we sell our collected items in bulk to a trusted recycling partner who decides what to sell or recycle.

Renew

Some of your more well-loved items need mending or refurbishing before they can be re-used. Renewal often takes far less effort than recycling, and the item retains far more of its original value by extending its life.

Recycle

If we can’t extend your item’s life, we can find value in its component materials. Clothing fabric is either “re-manufactured” into new clothing, or it is shredded into home insulation or stuffing for sofas and seat cushions (some call this “downcycling”). Some electronics are disassembled and sold for parts; the rest are shredded. The shreds are separated by type and sold as raw material to manufacturers.

Today, the majority of our collected items are shredded or “down-cycled”. We’re pleased with that result, as it keeps these items out of landfill.

Our mission is to help our retail and manufacturing partners to “close the loop” so that their products find their way back to them. They can then be repurposed or recycled into new products and forms a perpetual loop between them and their customers where we eliminate waste and our reliance on newly mined metal and newly cultivated fabric sources like cotton.