About Us

ERA’s stated mission is to reduce electronic waste and its environmental impact, and to reuse unwanted computers and related equipment through recovery, refurbishment, and donation programs. In practice that means giving working devices a second life with a charity rather than sending them for material recovery. The organization has securely repurposed hundreds of tons of equipment since it started.

ERA was founded in 2004 as a Canadian non-profit responding to two problems at once, the growing volume of electronic waste and the widening digital divide. More than twenty years later it operates depots and pickup services in cities across the country. That long track record is part of why organizations trust ERA with equipment that carries sensitive data.

Reuse before recycling means a device is only broken down for materials once it has no productive life left. Most recyclers shred everything that comes in, which recovers metals but ends the usefulness of equipment that still works. ERA inspects, wipes, and refurbishes what it can, then donates it, because keeping a laptop in service is better for the environment and for the community than melting it down.

Not everything that arrives can be reasonably repurposed. When equipment has reached the end of its productive life, ERA passes it to partnered certified recycling organizations that process the materials responsibly. That keeps the recycling chain accountable and ensures nothing is quietly landfilled once it leaves an ERA facility.

ERA works with individuals, small businesses, corporations, schools, healthcare facilities, government agencies, and charities. Households use ERA to clear out a couple of old laptops, while large organizations rely on it for full office decommissions and refresh cycles. On the receiving side, charities and non-profits apply for refurbished equipment they could not otherwise afford.

ERA’s vision is to foster stronger communities by reducing electronic waste while helping the non-profit sector meet its IT needs through computer donation and recycling. The two goals reinforce each other, since every device diverted from landfill is also a device that can support a charity’s work. That connection between environmental and social benefit is the core of the program.

A commercial recycler is generally paid to extract materials, so its incentive is to process volume quickly. ERA is a non-profit whose priority is finding the next user for equipment that still works, with recycling as the fallback rather than the goal. Donors also get secure data destruction and the knowledge that their old hardware supported a charity in their region.

It is the idea behind everything ERA does, that technology retired by one organization still holds real value for another. A monitor sitting unused in a storage room can become a workstation at a shelter or a classroom computer. Framing e-waste as a community resource rather than a disposal problem is what keeps devices in circulation instead of in landfill.

ERA works alongside chambers of commerce and boards of trade in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon, Mississauga, and Vancouver, along with groups including Imagine Canada, the Circular Innovation Council, the Recycling Council of Alberta, the Canadian Marketing Association, and the Better Business Bureau. These relationships help ERA reach more donors and connect equipment with the charities that need it most.

Start by booking a pickup or contacting the team to talk through your situation, whether that is a single office cleanout or an ongoing refresh cycle. Organizations that retire equipment regularly often set up a collection receptacle or join the membership program for added perks. Charities looking to receive equipment should apply through the donation application instead.