ERI, the leading material resource recovery, ITAD, mobility and data destruction/processing provider and largest recycler of electronics in the US, recently hosted a group of visiting dignitaries from Japan’s Ministry of the Environment for a tour of ERI’s flagship supercenter location in Plainfield, Indiana.
Distinguished guests Takeshi Sekiya, Vice Minister for Global Environmental Affairs at the Japanese Ministry of the Environment; Kobayashi Go, Director of the International Strategy Office of the Japanese Global Environment Bureau; Sakoguchi Sadamitsu, Assistant Director of the International Strategy Office of the Japanese Global Environment Bureau; and Seikko Sanno, First Secretary for Environment and Energy for the Japanese Embassy in Washington DC, were given a guided tour by Aaron Blum, ERI’s Co-Founder and Chief Compliance Officer.
ERI has been providing comprehensive electronic waste circularity services since 2002 and is ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, NAID AAA, R2 and BAN e-steward certified and is a fully carbon neutral organization, distinguishing the company as the world’s first electronic recycling and ITAD company to achieve carbon neutral status at all of its facilities nationwide.
ERI’s Indiana facility houses proprietary and first-in-industry circular technologies such as AI-driven robotics; proprietary hyper-efficient shredding; smart material tracking and reporting technology; and an in-house alkaline battery recycling plant, all of which were displayed and demonstrated for the visiting Japanese MOE dignitaries.
Earlier this year, ERI announced a collaborative partnership with ITOCHU Corporation to bring state-of-the-art e-waste recycling and ITAD services to Japan at ERI Japan.
“ERI Japan is ramping up quickly in Japan and we are very proud of our work with ITOCHU – signaling a unique, unprecedented partnership that brings best sustainability and circularity practices from North America and Asia together as a unified front,” said John Shegerian, ERI’s chairman and CEO. “We were honored to host our distinguished guests from the Japanese MOE last week and look forward to all the collaborative and innovative work we will be doing in Japan for many years to come. Our work will be done in a radically transparent, end-to-end closed loop manner where materials will be kept out of landfills, responsibly recycled, and put back into the circular economy to produce new products in Japan.”
With eight locations (and growing) in the United States, and now international locations ramping up in Japan, Vietnam, and India (with another dozen international locations to open before the end of 2028), ERI’s strengths lie in its ability to provide circular solutions ranging from data destruction and the advanced shredding of end-of-life IT equipment to remarketing, recycling, logistics and regulatory compliance services. In addition to its achievement of highly transparent chain of custody management ensuring the tracking of each IT asset using proprietary software, ERI also possesses technologies leveraging AI image recognition and robotic arms to automatically and accurately sort shredded materials.
Since its establishment, ERI has recycled more than 2.5 billion pounds of e-waste in the US, and it has contributed significantly to the realization of a circular economy.
Under its ‘Sampo-yoshi’ (“good for the seller, good for the buyer, and good for society”) corporate philosophy, the ITOCHU Group and ERI are working to strengthen initiatives and contribute to the achievement of sustainable development goals, while listening closely to the opinions of all stakeholders, including consumers, markets and society.
ERI Japan is scheduled to begin doing business later in 2026.
ERI is the leading international material resource recovery, ITAD and tech reuse and recycling company. ERI is certified at the highest level by all leading environmental and data security oversight organizations to de-manufacture, recycle, and refurbish every type of electronic device in an environmentally responsible manner. It is the first company in its industry to achieve ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certifications for security and data protection. ERI has the capacity to process more than a billion pounds of electronic waste annually at its eight certified U.S. locations, serving every zip code in the United States, with facilities and partners serving over 50 countries. ERI’s mission is to protect people, the planet and privacy. For more information about circularity, ITAD services and e-waste recycling at ERI, call 1-800-ERI-DIRECT or visit https://eridirect.com.
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