"The e-recycle idea came up because a lot of my clients were asking me, 'Hey Julio, can you help me get rid of these old electronic items?' I told them that I was having the same problem. I didn't know where to dispose of my own stuff. So I came up with the idea, 'What can I do for my community?' There was no one local to collect this stuff, but I did find someone out of the area. I made a deal with them that I would be a drop-off point with my bins and they would come and pick up the items once a week.
"I am very big on being ecologically friendly. My business is to re-manufacture printer toner cartridges so that the used cartridges aren't thrown into the landfills. This also saves my clients 40% on each re-manufactured cartridge. We reuse the hardware of the cartridge by taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it back together. Then we put new toner inside and it works like new. We know which kind of toner works best depending on the printer the cartridge is going into.
"Before I moved here to Downey I had a warehouse in East LA. A neighbor company had a fire start in their section of the building, which spread to my part and destroyed my inventory. When I came to Downey to rebuild my business, I decided I would offer something for free to show my customers what I could do for them. I am very good at fixing things. I went to businesses and told them that if they had a broken printer, I would fix it for them free of charge. I just wanted them to give me a chance to show them the value and service I could provide them. Once I got some capital, I invested it by buying broken or unwanted printers. I repaired them to like new. Then I offered them to companies for free if they would buy some of my re-manufactured toner cartridges. You can read about it on my website here."
~ Julio
What a great story. Thanks for sharing Julio with us.
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