Optoro Wins Prestigious Circular Economy Enterprise Award at the 2016 World Economic Forum

Washington, DC, Janury 20, 2016-– Optoro®, the leading platform for returned and excess inventory, today announced that it has been named the winner of the 2016 Circular Economy Enterprise Award. The award recognizes a company that is transforming its business towards the circular economy. Adam Vitarello, Optoro’s President, accepted the award yesterday as the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting took place in Davos, Switzerland.

“At Optoro, we are bringing innovation to a decades-old industry and disrupting the outdated retail returns process,” said Vitarello. “Our current form of consumerism, buying and discarding items, is not sustainable. Our mission is to find a good home for every item, helping divert them from landfills and create a more circular and productive economy.”

Traditionally, returned and excess items are shipped multiple times over the course of several months before reaching an end consumer, losing value and creating unnecessary pollution. During this prolonged chain of shipments, many goods are discarded because of shipping damage and end up in landfills. In the US alone, this process creates four billion pounds of waste, uses 1.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel, and produces 12 million metrics tons of CO2 from transportation.

Optoro’s technology helps retailers and manufacturers process, sort, and resell these returned and excess goods, directly to consumers. By cutting out the long chain of middlemen and shipments in the reverse supply chain and facilitating the reuse of returned items, Optoro is helping pioneer the future of sustainable commerce.

The Circulars, in collaboration with Accenture, recognizes individuals and organizations from commerce and civil society across the globe that have made notable contributions to driving circular economy principles — whereby growth doesn’t depend on the use of scarce natural resources. For more information, visit https://thecirculars.org/

About Optoro
Optoro is a technology company that is transforming the way the nation’s leading retailers and manufacturers process and sell their returned and excess inventory. Through its use of comprehensive, world-class data analytics and multi-channel online marketing, Optoro’s software platform determines the best path for returned and excess goods, maximizing recovery value, enabling consumers to get great deals, and reducing environmental waste. Founded in 2010, Optoro is based in Washington, DC and Maryland. Optoro, BLINQ, and BULQ are trademarks of Optoro, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. For more information, please visit www.Optoro.com and follow us on twitter at @optoroinc.