Loch MacFarlane and PCs for People’s Hampton shop manager Darrell Powell. (Courtesy Loch MacFarlane)
While most of his peers are focused on their SAT scores or their high school sports teams, Loch Macfarlane is busy checking his phone collection boxes around town.
The 17-year-old St. Christopher’s student is amid a push to grow his burgeoning electronics recycling business, SERFA (standing for Secondhand Electronics Repurposed For All), which accepts donations of smartphones, tablets and laptops, wipes them of their memory and repurposes them by giving them out to local people in need through local nonprofits.
Late last year, Macfarlane began working with national nonprofit PCs for People, which helps him refurbish the devices from his handful of collection boxes throughout Richmond.
Now, after PCs for People opened its first dedicated in-state location in Hampton last week, the high schooler is looking to grow the venture further. All of the electronics he collects are now wiped and tested at the Hampton facility.
Macfarlane’s idea for SERFA began two years ago, when he saw a trend among his family members and friends wherein perfectly good phones, tablets and laptops were sitting in drawers, going unused and collecting dust.
Wanting to help eliminate waste and put devices in the hands of people who need them and can’t afford them, he launched the venture in late 2024. Macfarlane yields no profits from the venture, coining it instead as a sort of proto-nonprofit idea as he works to obtain 501(c)(3) status.
“I wanted to see, what can I do with these devices,” he said. “A lot of my friends, and some people that worked with my dad had similar problems, where they had those devices left over.”
Though he also collects laptops and tablets, the business is specifically targeted toward collecting and redistributing old phones, said Macfarlane, whose father is prominent local developer Charles Macfarlane.
“Laptops are amazing for healthcare and applying for jobs. But you can’t do any of that if you don’t have a phone number. You can’t write down that phone number to apply for that job and get that call back,” he said.
Macfarlane started out by passing out hundreds of flyers and brochures around his school, and placed his first collection box for devices at Libbie Market.
With electronic donations beginning to stream in, Macfarlane realized that he would need help if he was to wipe the electronics securely to give them out to others. When he learned last year that PCs for People was planning on opening an electronic distribution and refurbishment center in Hampton, he reached out to see if a partnership was possible.
PCs for People, which was founded in 1998, provides low-cost computers and electronic recycling to individuals and organizations with low income. Headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the nonprofit has 11 locations nationwide, including its newest, 30,000-square-foot center at 1933 E. Pembroke Ave. in Hampton.
The facility opened on April 7. It was brought to the state by a joint effort between ChamberRVA and RVA757Connects, which teamed up to court the nonprofit to make the I-64 Corridor its newest destination.
Though the facility is an hour or so from Richmond, PCs for People CEO Susan Parriott said she feels her organization’s presence nearby can have an impact locally.
PCs for People’s new Hampton location. (Courtesy PCs for People)
“I think the community of Richmond and Hampton, Hampton Roads, they have a great plan about technology and how to grow this region, but you do need that workforce. You need an educated workforce … that means putting computers in the hands of people who can’t afford them,” Parriott said.
After signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with PCs for People late last year, Macfarlane said SERFA is scaling up its efforts to grow its number of collection boxes and its community connections.
“I asked, what can I do to partner with you guys? It’s a much larger, national, not-for-profit program that has a very, very similar mission to mine,” he said. “We signed an MOU … basically stating I would help them with the donation of laptops I receive, and in exchange, they would help me with phones.”
During his weekends (his weekdays are typically full with juggling classes and playing for his school’s tennis team), Macfarlane checks all of his collection boxes, checks which devices need to be wiped, sends them off to PCs for People to be cleaned and prepped, and then works with local entities like nonprofit Lighthouse RVA and Venture Richmond to get phones donated to his boxes in the hands of more Richmonders.
Per his agreement with PCs for People, SERFA’s collected devices are inventoried and brought to the Hampton facility, where PCs for People staff perform data wiping, functional testing and hardware repairs.
Refurbished laptops collected by SERFA are handled and distributed by PCs for People, while the nonprofit has agreed to give some of its sanitized tablets and phones to Macfarlane, for him to distribute in the Richmond community.
Since teaming up with PCs for People, SERFA now has a total of five collection boxes, mostly at other Episcopalian schools and churches like St. Catherine’s School and St. Stephen’s Church.
Macfarlane estimated that he’s worked with almost 100 phones since his venture’s advent, and around 30 laptops. He does not have a specific goal for the number of devices he’d like to work with in the future; the goal is instead to keep getting the word out to area nonprofits.
“I’m constantly sending out emails, and I’m constantly sending people my brochure, constantly seeing what I can get and making announcements, posting on Instagram, doing whatever I can,” he said.
And outside of working on SERFA, Macfarlane is amid his college search as he prepares to enter senior year this fall. Though he has not yet decided on where he will be attending, he said he has no plans to quit SERFA when he does.
“In terms of a future, I’d love to scale this up. This is not something that’s going to end when I go to college,” he said. “I want to continue working with PCs for People and my partners in Richmond … what I’m really working toward is a PCs for People level of sustainability. Becoming one of those organizations that is known for helping the Richmond community.”
Print Article