ERI, ITOCHU Announce Strategic Collaboration to Launch 'ERI Japan'

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

ERI, the U.S.’s leading material resource recovery, ITAD, mobility and data destruction/processing provider and largest recycler of electronics, has announced a collaborative partnership with ITOCHU Corporation, a leading global trading and investment conglomerate engaged in domestic trading, import/export, and overseas trading of various products, as well as business investment in Japan and overseas.

ERI and ITOCHU will team up to bring state-of-the-art e-waste recycling and ITAD services to Japan at the first foreign location of ERI: “ERI Japan.” The venture, co-owned by ERI and ITOCHU (50% ownership for each organization, with ITOCHU’s investment made through its wholly owned subsidiary, Belong Inc.), will incorporate best practices from both organizations, including ERI’s innovation-driven circular solutions for responsibly recycling electronics, and the networks of the ITOCHU Group and its partners in Japan and overseas.

“It’s an honor to partner with this storied, 150+ year Japanese brand for this first-of-its-kind venture,” said John Shegerian, ERI’s chairman and CEO. “ITOCHU and ERI working together signals a unique, unprecedented partnership that will bring best sustainability and circularity practices from North America and Asia together as a unified front. 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. We are incredibly excited and honored to be entering into this strategic partnership with our future-minded friends at ITOCHU.”

With eight locations (and growing) in the United States, 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. While ERI has stringently audited ITAD and recycling partners in over 140 countries, this new venture with ITOCHU is ERI’s first owned and ERI-branded location outside the United States.

Under its ‘Sampo-yoshi’ (“good for the seller, good for the buyer, and good for society”) corporate philosophy, the ITOCHU Group works 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.