Jacksonville, Texas · Operating since 2010
Most of it should never be shredded.
STS Electronic Recycling is an IT asset disposition company built on a contrarian position: that most retired equipment still has working life in it, and that the industry destroys it out of convenience.
What is STS Electronic Recycling?
STS Electronic Recycling is a certified IT asset disposition and electronics recycling company headquartered in Jacksonville, Texas, operating since 2010. It provides data destruction, asset remarketing, and zero-landfill material recovery for enterprises, healthcare systems, school districts, and government agencies in all 50 states, with R2v3 certified processing at its Jacksonville and Houston, Texas facilities.
How large is STS Electronic Recycling?
STS employs more than 300 people and operates six brands across four facilities, including two R2v3 certified processing plants in Texas. It processed over 1.36 million IT assets and more than 11 million pounds of equipment in its most recent reporting period, and is a three-time Inc. 5000 honoree.
The Record
One reporting period, counted.
Every ITAD company says it prioritizes reuse. This is what ours actually did with the assets it received.
Hard drives received and processed, each one recorded against its serial number.
Total equipment handled, estimated from unit counts and average weight per class.
What that works out to, week over week
Unit counts are measured from our asset management system. The tonnage figure is derived rather than weighed, so we label it instead of rounding it up. Weekly figures are the annual totals divided across the year, not peak-week counts. Figures cover the most recent full reporting period.
Daily item counts are a separate measure. The asset totals above cover equipment classified and recorded by asset class. The floor handles a wider mixed stream on any given day, from single drives to full racks, so items processed per day runs higher than assets recorded per day.
Why It Works That Way
An operator, not a broker.
Shredding is easy. It takes minutes, produces a clean certificate, and requires no judgment about what a device is worth. Reuse takes a facility, a testing process, and somewhere for the equipment to go afterward.
Most IT asset disposition companies have none of those things. They collect equipment, hand it to a processor they do not run, and broker whatever resale happens through a channel they do not own.
STS was built the other way around. We operate our own R2v3 certified processing facilities in Jacksonville and Houston, Texas, run by Chief Operating Officer Dannon Pate, and our own retail and wholesale channel, which produces more than 600 refurbished devices a day and ships them nationwide.
The Jacksonville campus runs on roughly 110 acres, split across separate buildings for intake, refurbishment, and wholesale processing. More than 300 people work across the group's four facilities and its sales network.
The name is the operating standard. STS stands for Secure, Transparent, Sustainable, and those three words map to what a client receives: data destroyed to a named standard, a record that reconciles against their own inventory, and material that stays out of a landfill.
Our clients are organizations that answer to somebody. Hospital compliance officers, district records officers, federal and state agencies, internal auditors at public companies.
Chief Revenue Officer Brad Guidry built the sales organization that carried STS from a regional recycler to coverage in all 50 states. The common thread across those accounts is not industry. It is that a certificate has to hold up when someone checks it.
How We Got Here
Fifteen years, built in Texas.
Each entry is dated, and where a public record exists it is sourced at the foot of this page.
The oldest company in the group is founded
Mike Buckles starts TechnoCycle in Houston out of a 120 square foot space. It will operate independently for 26 years before joining STS, and it still predates the parent company by thirteen years.
TechnoCycle company recordFounded in Jacksonville, Texas
Steven Norton and Shad Mabry start STS as a regional electronics recycler in East Texas, serving local businesses and school districts.
Inc. 5000 recordThe resale channel is built in-house
Rather than brokering recovered equipment out to third parties, STS launches its own refurbished retail and wholesale operation. This is the decision the reuse rate rests on.
Company recordThe Jacksonville campus
Having outgrown its County Road 1520 site, STS acquires the former Discount City property, roughly 110 acres, and consolidates intake, processing, and refurbishment onto a single campus.
Jacksonville Progress, February 2019A third Inc. 5000 listing in four years
STS ranks No. 2,367 on the Inc. 5000, after No. 3,436 in 2020 and No. 3,463 in 2018. Three appearances, with the ranking improving each time.
Inc. 5000 company profileForge Equity Partners invests
The Houston investment firm takes an initial position in March, beginning a staged ownership transition rather than an outright sale. Gardner Dudley later takes the chief executive role for the group.
Mergr transaction recordA second certified facility, in Houston
TechnoCycle joins STS, bringing a second certified processing facility. Founder Mike Buckles, who built the Houston operation from 1997 and took it onto the Houston Business Journal's fastest-growing companies list four years running, stays on as Chief Customer Officer.
Company recordMidwest coverage, and a completed transition
AVA Recycling joins the group, extending collection across Chicagoland. Founder Mark Domnenko stays on to lead Growth and Strategy, and the e-recycling lead generation network he built in the Midwest is adapted into the group's national demand strategy. Forge Equity Partners completes its acquisition the same year, closing a three-year staged handover.
Jacksonville Progress, June 2025Six brands under one network
TechnoCycle, Discount Computer Depot, AVA Recycling, Chicago Shredder and Data2Shred now run against shared certified processing, with Brad Guidry leading revenue and Dannon Pate running processing operations across both Texas facilities.
Company recordInside The Process
Sanitized before resale, never after.
Every data-bearing device is purged or destroyed to NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 before it is graded for resale. The method is recorded against the serial number, so a purged drive and a shredded one are distinguishable on the same certificate.
That order is what allows a 52.9% reuse rate without weakening the destruction record.
What Comes Through The Door
The eight largest asset classes, by count.
Most recyclers publish a tonnage figure and stop. This is the composition behind ours, class by class, from the same reporting period.
| Asset class | Units received | Est. weight | Data-bearing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard drives | 245,988 | 245,988 lbs | Yes |
| Laptops | 227,016 | 1,135,080 lbs | Yes |
| Chromebooks | 193,180 | 579,540 lbs | Yes |
| Desktops | 149,146 | 2,982,920 lbs | Yes |
| Flat panels and LCDs | 133,478 | 1,601,736 lbs | No |
| Network equipment | 109,122 | 872,976 lbs | Yes |
| Audio visual | 56,319 | 675,828 lbs | No |
| Printers | 33,797 | 844,925 lbs | Often |
Desktops are fourth by unit count and first by weight, which is why tonnage alone tells you very little about what a recycler actually handles. Unit counts are measured. Weights are derived from average weight per class.
Credentials
What we hold, and exactly where it applies.
Certifications attach to facilities, not to companies in the abstract. Stated here the way an auditor would want it stated.
R2v3
Jacksonville & Houston, TX
Responsible Recycling standard governing material handling, data security, and downstream tracking through final processing. Held at both processing facilities.
RIOS
Company-wide
Recycling Industry Operating Standard, integrating quality, environmental, and health and safety management into one audited system.
BBB A+
Accredited since 2012
Better Business Bureau accreditation held continuously for more than a decade, carrying an A+ rating.
TIPS & BuyBoard
Awarded vendor
Competitively awarded on two cooperative purchasing contracts, letting public agencies buy without running their own procurement.
Ownership & Acquisitions
Founded in 2010. Built by acquisition since.
STS has changed hands once and acquired three companies. In both cases where the acquired business had a founder still running it, that founder stayed on to lead a function for the group.
About STS Electronic Recycling
Where your equipment is processed.
STS Electronic Recycling is headquartered in Jacksonville, Texas, and has served schools, businesses, healthcare systems, and government agencies across all 50 states since 2010.
Equipment collected at your location is staged locally and transported to one of our two R2v3 certified processing facilities in Jacksonville, Texas and Houston, Texas, where all data destruction and material recovery takes place.
Collection, transport and processing are staffed by STS crews rather than subcontracted to a third-party carrier, which is why the chain of custody holds from your dock to the certificate.
View all STS locations
Send the list. See what it is worth.
Free pickup, nationwide. Send models, counts, and locations. We come back with the disposition path, the destruction standard, and a settlement estimate against real hardware rather than a guess.
Group companies TechnoCycle, Discount Computer Depot, AVA Recycling, Chicago Shredder, Data2Shred.
Sources and references
- Inc. 5000, STS Electronic Recycling company profile. Honoree 2018 (No. 3,463), 2020 (No. 3,436), and 2021 (No. 2,367). inc.com
- Jacksonville Progress, "Jacksonville: STS acquires former Discount City site," February 2019. jacksonvilleprogress.com
- Jacksonville Progress via Yahoo News, "Steven Norton sells STS Electronic Recycling," June 2025. yahoo.com
- SERI, Sustainable Electronics Recycling International. R2v3 standard and certified facility directory. sustainableelectronics.org
- NIST Special Publication 800-88, Guidelines for Media Sanitization. csrc.nist.gov
- The Interlocal Purchasing System (TIPS), awarded vendor listing. tips-usa.com
- Local Government Purchasing Cooperative (BuyBoard), awarded vendor listing. buyboard.com
- UN Global E-waste Monitor, on global e-waste generation and recycling rates. ewastemonitor.info
- TechnoCycle, Houston operations and company history from 1997. technocycle.com
- AVA Recycling, Midwest service coverage and collection programs. avarecycling.com
- Asset throughput figures are drawn from the STS internal asset management system for the most recent full reporting period. Unit counts are measured. Tonnage is derived from average weight per asset class.
