Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Cliff Hacking: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1584

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

In this 1584th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike peels back the layers of Cliff Hacking and really gets to know the man and Electronic Products Recycling Association, one of the tent pole partners of Toronto Mike'd. Alternative title: Everything you ever wanted to know about RecycleMyElectronics.ca, but were afraid to ask. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1584 of Toronto Miked! Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees. Palma Pasta Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. They're hosting us November 30th from noon to 3 at Palma's Kitchen. Be there!

The Advantage Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. Learn how to plan, invest and live smarter. Season 7 of Yes We Are Open, an award winning podcast from Monaris, hosted by FOTML Grego. RecycleMyElectronics.ca, committing to our planet's future, means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to Toronto, Mike is the founding president and CEO of the Electronic Products Recycling Association. It's Cliff Hacking. Hey Mike, how you doing? Welcome back, Cliff.

Thank you. It's great to be here. So previously when you visited, and I've loved every one of them, how has it been so far? This is what your third or no, maybe your fourth visit. I think it's the fourth. We've done a number of different musical themes. The last time I was here, the Beatles had only just released the new song that came out after John's passing that they put together. So yeah. So we would kick out Recycle My Electronics related jams, if you will. And I remember even the good people at EPRA would contribute to this exercise,

right? Like people would submit good recycling jams. Am I right? We ran a little contest. We awarded some prizes for people that could come up with songs that had something to do with electronics in them. And there were a bunch of really neat ones. I've got some favorites but you know it was it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun but this time, this time Cliff, we're gonna get to know a little more about you. We're gonna learn a little more about RecycleMyElectronics.ca because this time I'm gonna do my thing and I pulled a clip to tell you how good I am at this, this. So this is the moment in the podcast when I pat myself on the back.

Are you familiar with Andy Kim? I am. You wanna sing a little Rock Me Gently? How's your singing? My singing's not bad, actually. Well, can I, you wanna do a little bit? Rock me gently, rock me slowly. Okay, that's what this episode is, you and I singing.

So here's a moment, a minute or two from Andy Kim earlier this week, okay? So this is fresh content, so let's listen. I'm gonna go on record as you're the only one that I've ever spoken to that just gets it, gets it all. that just gets it, gets it all. And I feel so comfortable just talking about anything with you. Sometimes you're there and you're having a conversation

with someone and it's preordained. It's preordained. They've asked the question, they've written the question and so how tall are you today? You know, that one. You know? And I still remember our photos. I got up this morning, and I knew that I had to do

television and do all that kind of stuff. But I kept thinking about you. Because here, I'm relaxed. I'm not thinking about, okay, is the camera angle good? Is it not good? Is this going to be... I just knew that you'd be in a good mood. So that's Andy Kim letting you know, Cliff,

what you're in store for with this conversation. A relaxed, good time. And it's always good to see you, Mike. It really is. And I realized when I looked over, when I started playing the clip, that I never asked you to put on the is. And I realized when I looked over when I started playing the clip that I never asked you to put on the headphones and I'm like, oh, Cliff is missing it. Like it's like we just got those headphones in on time.

So I listened to them after. So I listened to yours all the time. So I will just re-listen to mine. That's all. I would love to hear. So do you cherry pick the episodes of Toronto Mike? Do you listen to, are you a regular? I so do you cherry pick the episodes of Toronto Mike do you listen to?

Are you a regular? I'd say I cherry pick. I look to see who's going to be on and then I kind of pick my favorites and go from there. So okay, but would Andy Kim be on the list of episodes you'd listen to? You know, he probably wouldn't have been, but now that I've heard the intro, I will go back and listen. You should listen. I feel like Andy's

working something out in my basement and it's kind of special. So I highly recommend that you listen to the the living legend that is Andy Kim that was recorded earlier this week. I will do that. I will absolutely do that and I'll drop you a note to let you know how I liked it. Okay, you better send me that note. Now, so Cliff, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna just chat here. I will tell the listenership that, you know, the good people at EPRA haven't sent me, they haven't seeded any questions. There's been no rules here. I feel like I can ask you anything I want because I'm just legitimately curious about

some things. I've been talking about RecycleMyElectronics.ca for years now and I have great conversations, more on that later, but could you share with me the origin story? I believe this EPRA starts in 2011, am I right? Could you just tell me the origin story? Absolutely. So a couple of things, I guess. As we started to look at what was going on with various regulations, governments, and this is all provincially regulated across Canada as it is in the states and some places in Europe it's more national.

Australia is more national as an example, but this is all provincial regulation. So each province brings in its own regulation and says you're now obligated to look after this set of products and unfortunately this set of products varies province by province, but we'll just stick with the start and say let's go very first and actually the very first province that we brought on blind was Saskatchewan it was the first one to come into the fold they are not as advanced right now as many other provinces in terms of the list of products that are obligated but they bring that forward and they say basically manufacturers and retailers

you are now responsible to make sure you look after this end of life product. And so as manufacturers and retailers looked at that they said we need somebody to manage this because it's going to be different across the country. And so thus we started. So who were you before, who were you Cliff before 2011 when Recycle My Electronics.ca launches? Well as we started I haven't yet launched my singing career but you know on a serious note I have been longing to join a choir. I used to when I was in high school sing and I enjoyed it. So you weren't in a rock band or anything? No, no, no. It was just, actually there was four of us that did some acapella stuff. It was interesting. Like a barbershop quartet?

In a sense, yes. The B-Sharps? So I do aspire to get back to that and it's just been a little too busy to be able to make that happen right now. But I mean on a serious note, we enjoy the music greatly and it's just been a little too busy to be able to make that happen right now. But I mean on a serious note, it's, you know, we enjoy the music greatly and it's a big part of what we do. Okay, so when you, because I'm trying to like, when we, when EPRA begins in 2011, you're working for some big companies like HP for example, right? I was, prior to this, I was with Hewlett Packard. I was vice president for the Americas of sales operations. Before that I was with Canadian Tire,

great company as well, strong Canadian company and did some great work there, loved the people there. Really a good place, Canadian Tire. Okay, so tell me, it's funny, my wife was watching this documentary on Netflix and I said, oh my God, this is like perfect content before I sit down with Cliff Hacking to talk about Recycle My Electronics.ca. But tell me, Cliff, like why is it a bad idea for me to throw, I don't know, my old phone

bricks as we say, why can't I just throw it in the trash? Why is it a bad idea for me to throw my old printer in the trash? Well, it's a bad idea for a number of reasons first of all uh... there are materials of concern is the polite way we say it uh... if you wanted to be probably a little more accurate say there could be hazardous materials in some of the things that we throw out but more importantly there's a lot of valuable things that can be recycled you don't want uh... the metal that's in there in a landfill.

In some cases with the computer that you're looking at in front of you right now, there is a little bar across the top, a light bar, that has mercury in it. That's what's lighting up that PC that you're looking at. And the result of that is we want to capture that mercury. We don't want that going into landfill. It's not good for people. It's been proven over years. We know this. So you want to make sure that it is recycled properly. And there's all kinds of valuable metals and not just rare earth metals but there's gold and silver and copper in many things. All the wires that you use and one of the things that's a big hazard for us is the connectors, the wires that people use for charging their phones. They don't think

about recycling those and they're easy to recycle. Okay, so there's there's multiple things at play here. Like so I often talk about, I say you don't want these these chemicals in our landfill so have them properly recycled. I have this thing memorized. I've said it a thousand times. But then in this documentary like I see like for example when these end up in let's say I'm gonna pick on a country in the Ghana or something and there's a or no Philippines maybe and there's a the workers who are kind of tearing it apart or masked up

but these are carcinogens and some of these some of these elements in your electronics are absolutely hazardous to the health of People who workers who would be processing them they are we don't export anything to a non OECD country That's against all of our rules and in fact everything that we Get back is dealt with here in Canada at the first stage So there is either manual disassembly or then ultimately in the next phase it goes to a shredder Where it's then, you know, split up into various types of materials.

So you can get various grades of plastic, you can get all the metals out, ferrous and non-ferrous, and those things all get separated as well so that they can go back into the supply chain. And so we don't ship material offshore. We don't take your cell phone or your computer and just send it over to the Philippines or Ghana. That's not something that we would allow. Okay.

So, so essentially I was reading there was like, I don't know, 3100 locations across the country approximately. Yes. Yes. And growing and growing. I was, I was actually, so I, my, uh, my team was in town this week and we were going through the review and you know know I'm sitting there and guy from Manitoba says well I've just added four new sites and the guy from BC

says well I've added three more and they're First Nations and the woman in New Brunswick said well I've got two more that are starting you know that'll be being placed by the end of the year and then the woman from Saskatchewan jumps in and says well you know I've got so our goal is to continuously improve with respect to both the awareness targets out there so that people know what to do with this that they can bring it back safely to us but also to make the access easier for everybody and so the more locations we can get the better. You know what you're doing is kind of amazing like so real-life stories so I've been talking about Recycle My

Electronics.ca and then finally I was doing some spring cleaning because this is going to prompt some more questions I had during the process. But I literally have old laptops that haven't been booted up in like, you know, eight, nine, ten years. Like, and then the cabling that comes with that. I have a whole whack. We'll get back to this, but I have a whole whack of cables that are from like they're not even they're obsolete technology now like I don't know if these these old cables from the 90s like I had so much that I went to recycle my electronics dot CA and one of the locations that was very convenient for me was a staples near Sherway Gardens. Okay. And I'm like, okay, this is this is so slick. It's so so easy to do. Here I am doing it. I've heard from so many listeners who have done

the same thing. And it just, the fact that, you know, these were properly recycling electronics instead of them ending up in the landfill. In this nightmare doc I saw on Netflix, like I was screaming at the documentary, RecycleMyElectronics.ca, like that's the solution. It is the solution. Best Buy and Staples are great places to take them back. You're off and going, especially with a Best Buy, you're gonna be going new tech while you're there. So take your old tech in. Right, swap it out here.

Absolutely. And it's shocking to me, like this is the phone I'm currently rocking, which is a Google Pixel, but my old LG Android phone, which has been recycled at the Staples near near Sherway Gardens but it's shocking how many nasty chemicals are in that phone. Like it's just shocking once you once you break it down. It is. I mean you really want to be careful and make sure the other thing that is a real concern these days is

getting the batteries out of all of these things. So you know there are various types of batteries but the the lithium ion batteries especially are ones that we want to make sure are handled properly. They can be hazardous with respect to fire. And so you really want to make sure that, you know, and all the processors take the batteries out. So that phone of yours that I see sitting there, that's now the Pixel, I've got a Samsung, but you know, the... We're in the Android family. We're in the Android family, but they're sealed now. pixel I've got a I have to I've got a Samsung but you know they the the we're

in the Android family we're in the Android family but they're they're sealed now you used to be able to open up your phone and get your battery out same with your computer you look at that computer now you cannot get your battery out of there so they have to open them up manually somebody has to physically take that device open it up and get the battery out and the batteries then get recycled properly as well and we're capturing that lithium is very important. It's valuable. What are the most frequently asked questions I get

is about batteries. Like, is there anything you're doing for the, just regular batteries? I gotta replace the batteries in my smoke detector. What do I do with the old ones? They will also go back. You can take those back, certainly to Best Buy, I believe to Staples as well,

but the municipal sites are there. There's a different organization that has sole battery responsibility. Having said that, as EPRA, if you bring your batteries back with your device and they happen to land in the same place, we deal with them. We make sure that they're recycled properly.

Well, amazing, amazing. Again, I'm referencing the dock because it's so fresh in my mind, but they said when developers and designers are meeting to, I don referencing the doc because it's so fresh in my mind, but they said when developers and designers are meeting to, I don't know, the next tablet that they're going to build or whatever and they have these conversations, they don't consider end of life. These things are sort of built to be disposable now, right? It's like you pointed out, I remember back in the day with my desktop, like, oh, I'm going to replace the hard drive now. You crack it open in the slot,

in the motherboard, you could just replace the hard like it was a world where you could you could upgrade yourself The the device and you could you could modify and if one part breaks You don't have to replace the whole thing You just replace that one part and nowadays they build these things like this laptop when this when a part of this laptop goes Okay, I'll buy another laptop, right? But they're not these these people are not considering end of life, but you are We are now the geek squad at Best Buy will help you try and fix some things you get a cracked screen or something I should they will they will do some of those things depending upon the state and where you decide to go The other thing that's going on and it's funny because we've just started in the last two years

Okay, we haven't even published the one I was looking at, as I say, with my team this week, something called the greening report. And so what we're doing is trying to track the trends of what manufacturers are doing to improve what's in electronics, to show why things are improving and why there are less hazardous materials. So lead is a perfect example, and I could give you a great chart on lead but the result of what used to be CRTs and monitors and and televisions that were cathode ray 2 televisions all had leaded glass in the front of them, right? They haven't been made since in any volume since 2009 now We're still getting a lot of them back

But what we have to do is we have to cut the front off of those televisions Take that leaded glass and ultimately get it to front off of those televisions, take that leaded glass and ultimately get it to ideally a smelter but somewhere like that where they can turn it back into lead ingots or where they can use it. In some cases they're grinding it up and using it with concrete so there's a number of different solutions where it's not then getting into a landfill where it will leach into our water tables. My goodness bless you. Now what are you doing later today? Here's the deal. So like, this is a while ago now, but I was taking a photo on the Humber Bay Bridge where the Humber River meets the Lake Ontario. And long story short, this thing on my bike where I would put my phone is mount.

It has a spring in it. Anyway, so the spring mount propels my phone into Lake Ontario. Do you want to help me find it? It's on the bottom of a, it's my old phone on the bottom into Lake Ontario. Do you want to help me find it? It's on the bottom of, it's my old phone on the bottom of Lake Ontario. If we can find it, we can recycle it at one of your 3100 locations. We could get a couple of kayaks and maybe some, I don't know. Do you kayak? Yes I do, I do kayak. I am not a good swimmer though, so I will, you know, we could get a two-person kayak. I'd get you out to the spot and you can dive down and get it. I'll dive in. I started kayaking for my, at TMLX15, which was at Great Lakes Brewery. By the way,

I have fresh craft beer for you, Cliff, to take with you. Thank you, Great Lakes Brewery. But I was gifted by the listenership, I was gifted a kayak that folds like origami. It folds into a backpack and I bike to Lake Ontario or Humber River and then I build it out on the beach or whatever and then I do a little paddle. We should go kayaking one day. I would love that and I bike across that bridge all the time. So when the weather is decent, I cycle down,

I play tennis down in that vicinity. And so I cycle down i play tennis down in that in that vicinity and so i cycle down uh... right across that bridge i go down through the humber trail across the lake shore on that uh... the the the martin goodman trail and it's awesome are you playing at the boulevard club where are you clint that's where i am okay i passed around i i notice this is what i noticed when i cut that right i do maybe five days a week and going by that but there's these two sets of courts the boulevard club and then the public courts. You're at the Boulevard Club courts. Yes but I've played on the public ones as well. Okay good so you're a

common man as well like myself there. So you and I on a kayak we're gonna find this phone and we're gonna we're gonna get it properly recycled otherwise it's just gonna who knows what's going on at the bottom of the Lake Ontario there. A great question came in from Jeremy Hopkin, who is on the live stream at live.torontomike.com. So hello to J-Ho, the official Toronto historian of the Toronto Mike podcast. You should listen, every quarter he drops by

and we have a different topic. He's amazing. You, Cliff, should listen to the Jeremy Hopkin historical episodes of Toronto Mike. Okay, so I got Andy Kim and Jeremy Hopkins got it. As long as you're taking notes over there. Jeremy writes, every time you plug them on the podcast, that's me.

And I plug you guys every episode. I wonder how they deal with electronic antiques, such as 1920s radios, 1950s televisions, et cetera. If they don't just flat out refuse to take them. Can you speak to that? The old, old, old stuff? We take the old stuff. So I guess, so one of the things that I spoke about earlier was each province has a different set of regulated products. Now the best right now is New Br... Sorry, British Columbia and then Prince Edward Island. So British Columbia is everything with a battery and a plug.

And our model, the revenue comes from the sale of new material, but we take everything old back. It doesn't matter how old it is. That's good to know. He has another question. He's wondering about the more contemporary equipment that is currently being sought after by archivists so they can perform legacy media transfers. He's thinking like beta, beta cassettes.

Did you ever own a beta player? I went straight to VHS. I skipped beta. You know what? You're smart. You don't want to be on the bleeding edge. No, but I'm told beta actually was better technology. It just didn't take off. 100%. I heard it better technology. It just didn't take off 100%

I heard it was better. It just didn't take off. Did you own a laserdisc player? I did. Okay Did you own the godfather and laserdisc? No, okay. I'm just curious. So I don't even know exactly what the question is here, but Maybe I don't know He's wondering about the be, I don't know, he's wondering about the equipment being sought after for archivists to do legacy media. I think I know where he's going. I think I know where he's going. Okay, tell me where he's going. So this is a request we get commonly and you just have to picture, first of all, if you take the city of Toronto as an example, they, all of the material when you go to drop something off there goes into a big

bin, basically a sea container, and it all gets jammed in together. By the time it comes back to us, there's a great deal of damage to it. It's hard to find anything that functions. And we've actually done audits on this material. And from what comes back to us, less than 3% can actually be powered up, less than 1% has any functional use whatsoever. And so going through all of that, the cost and the time to go through all of that and find anything of value is really tough. The other issue for us, and depending on what the device is, is data security.

And so when people bring things back to EPRA to recycle my electronics, what you get is a guarantee that we are going to turn that into dust. It is no longer going to be something that people can access. You're not going to worry about your identity theft. You're stealing my next question. This is great. That's what we do. And so, you know, if you have something like that, if you're out there and you're looking to take something back and you think this has value, don't bring it directly to us us take it to one of the reuse entities if it's a computer computers for schools are looking for this stuff all the time so you know they're a charity organization

a national federally funded organization that we work with across the country they'd love to take stuff like that back and because Jeremy's on the live stream he was clarifying you nailed it there Cliff you know exactly what J-ho's talking about. He was wondering if you would spare these things, like if somebody brought in a laser disc player and it functioned. But like you said, so you know, you're not getting very much functional electronics. No, no, there's not much to come back. So most of the things come back to us are truly end of life. And you just touched on it, but I'll ask my question anyway so we can really bang this point home. So, like I said, I had a multiple laptops that haven't been booted up in, like, I

don't know, five, six, seven, eight years. And I don't even know why I kept them. I'm sure I kept them because I thought, hey, maybe one day I'll need a file. Like, I try to put all my files on Google Drive. Yeah. But like, I thought, oh, maybe one day I'm going to this old PSD file I have from whenever 2001,

I might need it for a client or something. So I kept them hanging around. But of course, they're old OS. So I did boot them up. And then I looked for the magic how to like wipe it, wipe this hard drive. But the old OS is it's not easy. Okay, this is not as easy as pressing a button. So I was curious, oh, do I have to wipe these? And when I say wipe, I don't mean with a sanitization napkin. I'm talking about the like remove all the data and stuff from the hard drive before for security purposes. But you said I don't have to do that. Well, you don't. But if it makes you feel more comfortable, one of the things that on

the older computers that you can do is you can take the hard drive out of them. And if you take the hard drive out, you can drill it. And so if you drill some holes in it, you know, half a dozen holes randomly across a hard drive, then you are going to absolutely destroy the RAM and the people will not be able to recover that. Okay. So if you want to get a good drill and do that. Now another fun fact, a fun fact I learned on the website, I was preparing for your visit.

Love it very much. In a moment I'm going to invite you to a very special event, but before I get there, I was reading that 80% of Canadians have unused electronics. And I'm here to tell you Cliff, I think 80%, I think that number is low. I think you're right, I think it's low. We have done some studies that tell us that people keep things in their drawers, in their basements, in their garages. And you know, one of the bigger challenges,

and we were talking about this as an organization just this week, is the rural aspect of things. So the woman who runs Saskatchewan, her challenge is, how do you get people to get things out of their barns? Because Saskatchewan has a lot of rural area, and they do not, they're not gonna put that in their car or their truck and drive it down to a recycling center, they're not going to put that in their car or their truck and drive it down to a recycling center.

They just toss it in the barn. And so how do you motivate them to take action as opposed to just saying, oh yeah, we'll just stick it over there. We've got lots of room here. No, that's a good point here. But when I was thinking 80% of Canada, I'm wondering if I could talk to these 20% who have no unused electronics in

the home. Like these are like minimalists. Maybe they're Luddites and they don't have any technology, but I'd like to talk to these people. Well, maybe you've got somebody who's in a very small condo and can't have any room for storing those kinds of things. Okay, let me see their kitchen. You know, the junk drawers we all have. Let me take a peek inside that junk drawer. Mr. 20%. It's the cell phones that tend to stick around. People look at them and think, Oh, well, I've got pictures on there or, you know, I'm gonna, you know, I may need it again. What if my phone breaks down? And so it tends to be the cell phones that people have around. And I will confess, I mean, I've got a very old early generation Blackberry,

which I have not recycled just because it has some sentimental value. Is it the blue one? I have a blueberry, the blue blackberry that I had like in 2006. I'll take a picture and send it to you. You can see it's, this one's black but I did have a blueberry as well at one point. Wow, okay, memory lane. So one of the questions I got was about printers. So I'm, I have a beef of the printer industry like I know you you maybe you in the past life you worked for a printer manufacturer we might have dropped their name, but it feels to me like printers are I

Don't know they're made to be Disposed of in like 18 months like it's like buy this printer It might work for 18 months and then something's gonna bust up and you'll have to buy another one But you do of course you can recycle these printers when they bust up. Absolutely. We want the printers, we want the cartridges that come with them back that can all be recycled. All right. Look at this.

I'm taking notes here. My wife's going to be very happy. If I have an office, this came from Ian Service. So Ian Service who owns the server that is hosting this very audio file. So shout out to Ian Service and he'll be at TMLX 17. And this is because I'm going to invite you to a very special event, Cliff, in just a moment. But he's got like big office equipment, like, like, like it required a whole big pickup truck to move some of these big things.

Like if you have huge office equipment that you're ready to recycle, like, is there any way to get a pickup like will Somebody at recycle my electronics dot CA come and pick it up if it is an entire installation There are people that we work with so in some cases this material is all leased and the least companies wanted back But if that's not the case and it was purchased and it was a large amount of material that was you know a truckload of Material then we could find a way to make that happen. Wow. Okay.

I'm now going to invite you to an important event, Cliff. And if you're busy, maybe you get a tennis match. I will have to just deal with that. But on Saturday, November 30th, and everyone listening is invited as well. So break up your freaking ears. November 30th. It's not too many, a couple of,, couple of Saturdays from now, at noon. So from noon to 3 p.m.,

we're doing a live recording at Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga. So Palma's Kitchen, we're on the second floor. I'm gonna be recording for this three hours. Everybody who comes to this event, which is TMLX 17, our 17th Toronto Mike listening experience, will get a free meal, a delicious free meal from Palma Pasta. By the way, Cliff,

I'm sending you home with a large lasagna from Palma Pasta. It's in my freezer right now, so don't leave without that. But TMLX 17 will do a live recording. You get free, a free meal and you get a fresh a can of fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. I'll be drinking bringing that as well. Cliff, by any chance can you make an appearance and pop on the mic and say hi at TMLX 17 on November 30th? You know what when I first so I was warned by Amy that this may happen but I thought it was gonna be no surprise no no but it's it's a good thing because she had indicated that it was gonna be this Saturday and I am playing tennis this Saturday but on

the 30th I am free oh my god and I will be there you know I did you hear that FOTM's cliffhacking in the flesh November 30th noon to 3 p.m. that's amazing so you Alan Cross will be a cast of heavyweight. Humble Hauer is gonna be there. Okay amazing. And come hungry darlin'. Okay. You and Ruth Chris. Yeah and you know you got your, I don't know you didn't respond because you were putting that in your calendar but that's exactly what I was doing. You got the lasagna. I'm gonna repeat it but you got the lasagna in my freezer. You're going home with that today. I appreciate that and there's a nice link. You probably do this on that today. I appreciate that. And there's a nice link.

You probably do this on purpose, but when you do your intro, you go from our end of life electronics to Ridley Funeral Homes. And that's kind of a nice bridge if you think about it. Well, I'm always thinking about everything, Cliff. You know that. And on that note, Ridley Funeral Home,

who have an excellent podcast called Life's Undertaking and Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home, who will be at TML X 17. So you guys can beat Brad was here yesterday to record an episode of his podcast and people should listen to that. It's a we did a mailbag episode with frequently asked questions of Brad about the podcast. So listen to the most recent episode of life's undertaking. I'll give you a device to do that with. And here's your measuring tape, Cliff. You can measure your tennis racket, whatever you want. Yeah, that's incredible.

Thank you, I appreciate that. There you go, you didn't know all this swag was coming. So one more gift and then if you, you know, no pressure, but if you had a gift for me, that'd be awesome. But I'm gonna give you one more gift. So we're talking about recycling, you know, electronics. And I always talk to people, your old device, your old cables, whatever.

And then I give everybody a new device that hopefully doesn't reach end of life anytime soon. But this is a quality wireless speaker from Monaris. It's right there for you, Cliff. It's awesome, thank you. But you have to earn that by listening. And this is fun and easy, and it's very educational but you will listen to yes we are open so yes we are open is an award-winning podcast from Monaris hosted by FOTM Al Grego you'll meet Al

Grego the cuddly bearded one at TMLX 17 on November 30th he'll be there for sure Al went to Winnipeg and his most recent episode from season seven is that he went to Jenna Ray Cakes, co-owned by twin sisters Jenna Hutchinson and Ashley Kosawan. Their dream began 15 years ago in their small apartment, sparked by an episode of Cake Boss, and it grew into a legitimate business despite numerous legal and logistical hurdles. So this small business, Jenna Rae Cakes. We find out the story of like triumphs and tribulations and Al does a great job capturing these stories and that is the latest episode in season 7 of Yes We Are Open.

So you know what you'll be listening to, Cliff. I love it. When you say Cake Boss, it reminds me of one of the cleanest comics who unfortunately isn't with us anymore, John Panett. I don't know if you've listened to him, but when he talks about Cake Boss, that skit just, it cracks me up every time. It really does. And he had a catchphrase. It's killing me that it's not popping in my head right away, but he had this like this term he would say in a certain way that I would often repeat, but hopefully it comes back to me by the end of this episode, but he had this like this term he would say in a certain way that I would often repeat but hopefully it comes back to me by the end of this episode but he had a catchphrase that I quite

liked but yeah we lost him far too soon. We did. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. And we do our own podcast we have a welcome diversion we've had Mark Salzman on it a number of times we did a podcast on batteries which we talked about earlier. We've also talked about what happens with plastics and we're getting ready to film three more, three to five more in February so we're on it. Next time you have Mark Saltzman on who's an FOTM, ask him about his early grunge band days because I talked to you earlier about your your barbershop quartet that you were in but that was an aspire before he got into the sort of like tech journalism Mark was an aspiring musician I will ask him I will absolutely ask him he was an up-and-coming grunge act if not for a

change here and there you know his band could have been the next I don't know the next rusty who knows what we would have been dealing with there and then it would have been an alternate history okay here's a big question for you now that I've got you comfy this This is the Andy Kim moment where you're comfy, you're settled in. But the big question I get is, this is Leslie who sent this in, but I heard it from a number of people, how the heck do you guys make money? Like how is this wonderful project funded? It's a great question. So the revenue model for what we do is based on new sales.

So that cell phone that you have over there, if you, depending on what province you bought it in, and the rates can change, but I'm going to say it was roughly somewhere between seven and 10 cents that you contributed to the revenue model, which comes to me, which then allows us to be able to recycle anything that people bring back. We are a not-for-profit company so profit isn't an issue for us. All we do is make sure that we match our balance sheet so that

what comes in pays for what gets recycled properly. And we do have, in terms of the properly part of things, the other thing that we can assure people about is that we have inspectors, we have auditors who actually go out to each of our processors to ensure that they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. That they're not, you know, shuffling something off to the side and putting it in a container and sending it to one of those places you mentioned. That it's actually being dealt with properly and that the health and safety of the workers in those areas is being respected as well.

That's good to hear. You got to, you know, audit these people and ensure. By the way, the catchphrase, bring back to John Panett for a minute, who I thought was very funny too. I think it was something like this. I'll try to do my best imitation. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Something like that he would did at the end of a bit and I found myself repeating this over the years. Yeah, he was he was great. He really was. I don't care, but I do care about this here. Okay, so What this is on your website and there's a question of what is a steward a Steward is like a customer to us if you will so that's either it could be a retailer could be a manufacturer. Like Staples would be a steward. Absolutely yes. Best Buy. So these are basically like when somebody in Saskatchewan has

three new stewards basically which is somebody you're accrediting these places to be a drop-off place to properly. Well the stewards are really the more the people who are selling the material. So it could be the mom-and-pop shop, it could be the big best-by-itself, it could be the staple store that you talked about, it could be London drug, you know, you go across the country, any of those places and I say there are a lot of mom-and-pop shops and our product has expanded. In fact this year we've had four provinces

who have expanded their product capabilities. And in three of those four, we now do small appliances as well. And so those are coming across the country as well. So if you think about vacuum cleaners or coffee machines or your toaster, all of those things are now eligible in British Columbia, in Prince Edward Island, in Nova Scotia, and in New

foundland and Labrador amazingly. So they're, you know, they're way ahead of a lot of other provinces in order to take back small appliances, which is great. In Ontario, can I recycle jokes? Yes, yes you can. Especially old dad jokes. You know, I know you're a father, so old dad jokes are the best. Thank goodness. On the live stream, Jeremy's amazed it's not for profit. I don't know if people, I haven't been mentioned, I haven't mentioned that, not for profit. Well, and there's a purpose for that.

We are not in the business as many other people are of trying to make money. What we're trying to do is the right thing for the environment. That's our sole goal is to make sure that we're compliant with regulations across the 10 provinces and to make sure that while we're doing that, that we're doing environmentally correct work and that things are being respected in terms of the best practices for how you recycle. I gave you a bunch of gifts Cliff and here I am sitting here wondering why nothing came back in return. No reciprocation. Why don't you have a gift for me? Well, I actually have a couple of things

Now I'll start recording now you can start so we've got a we've got a bag that you That folds down and comes back together For when you go shopping and it's a recyclable bag and it says recycle my electronics on it, but it is really sturdy So if you got something heavy you need to carry that's where you put it Love it so much and I saw you bring it in then so I also have a backpack for you I love backpacks and I bike everywhere and in the backpack are some other treats There might be a couple of there might be a couple of pens. There might be a couple of USBs there might also be a couple of flashlights there might be a couple of USBs, there might also be a couple of flashlights

which are recyclable and all of this is, you know, stuff that hopefully you will use between you and your family. I love this very much. Thank you very much. And just a little heads up, if you did bring things like that to TMLX 17 on November 30th, then well you so much for the the gifts here I have a note from Mark so I guess it was

about a year ago when you were last here and we were kicking out some recycling jams. And I enjoyed that very much as well. But he says, I remember a year ago, you were excited when Cliff bought in for a year. And my reaction was, Mark's reaction was, here's a guy, this is you Cliff, not me. I'm never ahead of any curves. He goes, here's a guy ahead of the curve in terms of where media is headed. So Mark, who people know of, used to have regular appearances on Toronto Mike, he's like, I won't call him a futurist, but he's always monitoring, you know, where is the media going, what's the future here? I guess so radio starts to die.

What starts to take its place, et cetera, et cetera. He was very impressed by your foresight in renewing for a year of partnership with Toronto Mic'd. We're always happy to work with Toronto Mic'd. And when you think about how you target and the way things have changed, when I started, you know, this organization, as you say, being the founding member, we start to look forward and we look at what we're

doing. We were doing television, we were doing some radio, we were doing some print ads. These days we do all of that, but we're finding far more effectively are the podcasts to try and hit the younger generation. We're using social media for geotargeting to say, you know what, in this particular area of New Brunswick, we're not getting the uptake that we'd like, so we would really like to go after this group. And so, you know, whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, we use a number of different vehicles

to try and target specific populations to say, we know that we're not getting back from this particular district the same rate of electronics for end-of-life that we would from other places. So we absolutely are trying to continue to evolve and one of the things that we love is the partnership that we have with you here at Toronto Mic'd. It's fantastic. So one of the common themes pretty much every episode, I'll have somebody like an Andy Kim here and at some point I'll ask, I'll let them know it's because I used to say just

electronics and old devices and laptops and phones, et cetera. And then I realized by talking to you, you mentioned last time you were on, you talked about cables and it was like, oh my God, like everyone I know has a drawer full of cables, old cables. So I started talking. So there's essentially, I don't know, 200 conversations in 2024 where some level of celebrity tells me about the drawer full of cables or the box of cables and we talk about these cables that haven't been used since the early 2000s or the 90s

or whatever here. So this sparked an idea with Tyler Campbell, co-host of FOTMcast. Him and Cam Gordon once a quarter kind of talk about everything in the TMU. And this is from Tyler. If RecycleMyElectronics.ca signs up for another year, he will produce a super cut of these celebrities telling me, Toronto Mike, about all the cables

that they've been hoarding and we will air that during the next FOTM cast. I just add a corollary to that. They have to do something with them. They have to bring them in. Maybe they bring them in and we, you know, we put a collection bin in your driveway and they all have to bring them as they come here and drop them off because it's no good keeping them in the drawers I Signing up, but I'm signing up. Wait, so hold on. I got I wish I had a sound effect for this here I don't want to bury that lead. Am I hearing correctly?

Am I hearing in my headphones right now cliff hacking? Are you telling me the ePra the good people behind recycle? my electronics dot CA are renewing for 2025. Not only that, but we're hoping we're hoping we're hoping just like you have a recycling bin in your driveway for your cardboard and your cans. If you'd like a very small recycling bin that we can keep there and when it's full, you call us and we take it away. Oh, my God. We can make that happen. And then you can tell your and when it's full, you call us and we take it away. Oh my God. We can make that happen and then you can tell your guests, bring it here. Oh no.

I, Cliff, this is, you know what? You're my new VP of sales. Sorry, Tyler, I've got a new guy. That's a great idea. And when I, cause I always say knock on the side door, there's certain instructions. Don't hit your head on the ceiling. You know, I could add to that, bring any old, you know, any old cables or devices that you no longer want Bring them for the recycle my electronics dot CA bin 100 we can have it down here in the studio

I love this idea. They're quite that we can get we've got big ones and small ones But yeah, we could get one that would fit quite nicely and you know headphones you go to you fly in Air Canada You get one of those little earphones and and then they break pretty quickly Yeah, they're so crappy, but they're recyclable. So I mean all of that stuff. It's just like the cables You're talking about you've got to bring that stuff back Okay, that's such a good idea, but you know that triples the price of the partnership We'll talk about that later is your jacket, you know, you know, you've got an agent I got one too So we'll let them talk. The negotiations begin here.

Okay, I did record this conversation by the way. You've got a nice jacket and you're on the live stream. And there's a question on the live stream. If that jacket is from the old hide house, it's worth the drive to act. It is worth the drive. I have bought things from the hide house. This one is not.

Did you know it's closing? I did not, no. Yeah, this is like fresh news. The old hide house, which is, you know, and if you've got, obviously this is is not. Did you know it's closing? I did not, no. Yeah this is like fresh news, the old hide house which is you know and if you've got it obviously this is Toronto Mike so most people here are familiar with the GTA but we just grew up with it's worth the drive I mean worth the drive to Acton was just something everywhere although I will tell you if you're encountering a young person and you tell them like they'll say something about oh I'm gonna go to Acton and pick apples or something and if you say well it's worth the drive. They look at you funny.

They do. Like this is happening now. It's like I'm dropping these references and I'm like, oh, that requires like, I need to give like some context. Yes. They need to be educated. Yes. Okay. We got to talk. Like what is Mike? But I actually find, and I don't know if you do this, but I drop references. Like everybody has the same touchstones as me and then I realize oh not everybody is you know it's not everyone is wired like me maybe it's me and Andy Kim they're in a select group here but I know I don't know if I sound weird or this guy saying strange things it's like but to me it's like I know I'm speaking this language that is not shared by everybody no it's it's got to do with shared experience for sure I mean I'm sitting looking across from you and I see the same language that is not shared by everybody. No, it's, it's got to do with shared experience for sure.

I mean, I'm sitting looking across from you and I see the Sam, the record man. Um, not everybody knows about Sam, the record man. Now there was one that up until recently, there was one existing that stayed in place, but is gone. And I know, uh, Belleville. I want to say, yeah, Belleville. Yeah. That out that way.

Yes. Kingston, Belleville. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Was out there somewhere. Bay of Quinte. What do they call it? Could be Bay of Quinte. Could be. Yes. So it was out there somewhere for sure. But they also took the big Sam sign and saved it.

So I believe it is now you're testing my memory here, but I'm going to say that it went to what used to be Ryerson university, uh, kind of where the old Maple Leaf gardens is, that it's in that area somewhere. See, I feel like it's in the Young Dundas area. You may be right. Like it's Young Dundas Square, maybe?

Yeah. It's funny how we don't know this off the top of our head. I'm sure I've seen it, but I don't think it is where the old Maple Leaf Gardens is. I think it's in Young Dundas Square, and it definitely is on a building that's a, they call it TMU now. Yes. The formerly known as. I have irreverently referred to it as Mutt.

Mutt. Yeah, it's probably not Metropolitan University of Toronto, Mutt. So it's probably easy to remember. Because TMU is Toronto Mike's universe. Everybody knows that. By the way, this was a gift for my 50th birthday. It was from Rob Pruse, keyboardist for Spoons.

I know you're a big fan of romantic traffic. And it was drawn by FOTM Kurt Swinghammer. So Kurt Swinghammer is a very good artist and this is one of his prints that Rob bought for me. It's a limited edition. I see Kurt signed it on the bottom. So yeah, Sam the Record Man. There was a location I used to go to as a kid

at Jane and Bluer, so west end of Toronto. And I used to waltz over and buy 45 singles for my record player that I bought at Consumers Distributing. Yes, yes. And Consumers Distributing would have sold a lot of electronics that would be now showing up at one of your 3100 stewards across this country. Yeah, they're one of your 3,100 stewards across this country. Yeah, they're long out of business, but that's for sure. I used to go to the downtown one.

I used to find the selection was better. And so I would go down to the Yonge Street store and yeah, I loved it down there. Way better. Did you see the Tragically Hip documentary on Prime? I did, yes. That was fascinating to me that they got some deal Towers records or something.

There was some opportunity they had to promote their album that they turned down because they were loyal to Sam the Record Man. They're like, no, we're Sam the Record Man guys. They turned down this big deal. I want to say Towers records. It sounds right. And you have to respect that. The loyalty aspect of things is important in life but the kicker on that was that shortly thereafter sound the recommend would publish this magazine and they were kind of Because of course sound the recommend was ignorant to the fact that the the hip guys had done this but they were like lambasted In this magazine. So it's like we just sacrifice and cost ourselves a small fortune or whatever and And now you're just like going at us in the magazines. So so OK, so.

This has been amazing. That is such fantastic news. I know there's a lot of applause in the GTA right now as they hear those nice words about renewing for twenty twenty five. I love the idea of the debate in the TMDS basement studio here where guests can bring their old gear, their old electronics, their old cables, et cetera, et cetera. So we mentioned EPRA starts in 2011.

Off the top, I referred to you as, I want to get the title right, founding president and CEO. So now we're looking back at 13 plus years, if that math is correct. I used to be good at math. Like what are you most proud of? What are you most proud of Cliff hacking with regards to Electronic Products Recycling Association 13 years later? I'd say two things. I think the culture we've created as an organization internally, I'm extremely proud of. The team that I get to work work with the people. So I've got people that, you know, Dennis Newfeld who was the very first employee in Manitoba.

We hired him in 2012. He's still with us. He was here in town this week. Does just an amazing job. Craig Weishart in, in BC, again with us since 2011 there since day one, still working with us, working hard, doing a great job. So we've built a culture where people like coming to work, we try and do the right things as far as they're concerned, which mirrors what we try and do as far as the environment is concerned. We're an ethical organization and we really do care about what we do and I think that

shows both internally in our culture, which then allows us to be able to function externally and deliver against our mandate. You know, if you had that gathering of these fine people, you said it was last week where everybody collected? Yes. If you had timed it better, I would have fed them all at TMLX 17 on November 30th.

Everyone, again, this is a free event. You show up, you get a free meal. I would have fed them all at tmlx17 on November 30th. Everyone again this is a free event you show up you get a free meal. I would have fed them so tell the the GTA based people that you work with tell them there's a delicious free lunch and a delicious can of fresh craft beer waiting for them at tmlx17 on November 30th. I'm doing a virtual all employee meeting next Tuesday and I will do the pitch for you. Cliff love these conversations so much. Can't wait to have another one in 2025. But thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm a fiercely independent podcaster here running his own digital services business.

So it really, and again, no BS here. It means a lot to get a commitment like you just made. It just allows me to focus on the creative end, the logistics, the capturing of these stories. I got some amazing episodes in store and you make that possible. So thank you RecycleMyElectronics.ca and thank you FOTM Cliff Hacking. It's great to be here. And Toronto Mic'd is not just Toronto, it's across the country. So everybody needs to pay attention to that, it matters.

It matters. And that, by the way, and that, the way I'd say it was coined by Stu Stone and I just wanna tell the listenership that Stu Stone will be back on Toronto Mic'd in a couple of weeks time. So look forward to Stu Stone's return. And that brings us to the end of our 1,584th show.

You can follow me on, I'm on Blue Sky now, I'm at torontomic.com there. Go to torontomic.com for all your Toronto mic needs. Much love to all who made this possible. First and foremost, recyclemyelectronics.ca. Go there, find out where to drop off those old, do it. It's one thing to say I got some old crap I got to get rid of, but you got to do it it you got to drop it off at a recycle my electronics dot CA location go to that website right now Great Lakes Brewery thank you Great Lakes for sending over some beer for tmlx17 on November 30th. Palma pasta thank you for hosting and feeding us I am gonna come very hungry I'm gonna stop, Cliff. I will be so hungry by November 30th. It's going to be delicious. Raymond James Canada, Minaris,

can't wait to see you, Al at TMLX 17, Ridley Funeral Home. Brad, I'll see you there. And I'll see everybody. No joke, Cliff. At three o'clock today, there's a double header today, at three o'clock today, Victoria Matiasz makes her Toronto Mic debut. See you all then. And they're broken in stocks, the class struggle explodes.