The pandemic of COVID-19 certainly affected not just the US but also the rest of the world. People had to stop their normal lives and quarantine themselves a least for the first few weeks, until we could find some answers to what we were dealing with.
By late March 2020, a lot of big retailers like Best Buy and others had to stop taking e-scrap collection due to concerns about COVID-19. Some processors in the e-scrap world saw disruption in the upstream supply of e-scrap. Downstream demand certainly went down for the first few weeks of the pandemic, but by the end of April and early May, we saw an improve of online retail sales of electronics that started going back up quickly.
We at Global Material Recycling, started an early response at the beginning of the pandemic, to protect the safety and health of our staff and also our customers. But as time went on, we restarted our pickup service, and we are following social distancing, and when it’s not possible, we make sure we use protective personal equipment, with at least a mask, if it’s required either by local authorities or in coordination with our customers.
As the economy goes back to normal, we are not sure 100%, but we have the expectation that the upstream supply of e-scrap might increase in the following months, especially as we go into the first and second quarter of 2021, since a lot of the population is already working more from home and the use of computers and remote work have increased due to the quarantine measures.
These are certainly times that indeed, are testing us at a lot of different levels, but we are hopeful for the future and we expect that at the end of the tunnel, we will be even better and healthier than ever.