Founded: 2006
Website: www.gazelle.com
Location: Boston, Massachusetts.

Think about this for a minute: millions of electronic gadgets are produced and sold annually worldwide. In the United States alone, a great deal of these sales are not first time buyers, but upgrades. Besides, usually when you upgrade a gadget, such as your mobile phone, laptop, etc, the “old stuff” quickly becomes e-junk. Have you ever wondered where all your e-junk end up? Some people are proactive about this, and try to sell their old gadgets on Craig’s list, and eBay, while others (like me) end up piling up these “e-junk”. About a year ago, I decided to begin clearing out my e-junk. I had some successes on Craig’s list, but I felt it was too cumbersome. Then I found Gazelle, the electronics recycling company.

Gazelle is a reCommerce startup that specializes in recycling used electronics and gadgets. The exciting thing about using this recycling service is that they will pay you for your “e-junk”. Indeed, someone’s junk could be gold to others. For small items, they even pay for packaging and shipping, so you don’t have to worry about anything except sending over your used electronics. I had a chat recently with Dan Smith, Vice President of Marketing, about the origins of Gazelle. I was thrilled to learn that the idea was born from a recycling experience of one of the co-founders, Israel Ganot, who tried to recycle his collection of used electronics. He found out that he was asked to pay for recycling the items, an experience that he felt was wasteful. He attempted to solve this problem by offering the owners of used electronics money in exchange for recycling their items and he created a business opportunity around this. Thus, Gazelle was born.

The way it works is pretty simple. Gazelle has categories of items that they currently accept. If you would like an item to be recycled, you simply fill out details of the items on the website, and Gazelle presents you with a offer for your item. If you accept the offer, you ship it to Gazelle (in Boston – and they will help with this), and when it is received and checked, you get paid. Very straight forward. I have used this service a few times, and I can recommend it anytime. I had a pleasant experience working with the folks at Gazelle. As of now, this service is only available in the United States. Folks, it’s time to be responsible, empty up your e-junk drawers and head on to Gazelle.com.