Reap the rewards of hardware recycling
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Only around a third of U.S. companies are using commercial asset-disposal services, IDC says, but it's definitely worth looking into from both an ROI and green perspective.
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By Georgia Evdoxiadis Daily Herald Staff Writer  Three neighboring governments have teamed up to bring consumer electronics recycling to all their residents.
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A new initiative seeks to improve old products.
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By ANN S. KIM Staff Writer  When the two plastic crates at Tom Wiest's home fill up, it's time to head to the downtown recycling station. His desire to help the environment makes him a regular visitor.
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HP has a new process in place to recycle its used inkjet printer cartridges.
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Fighting clutter? Here's how to clear it out.
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Rural and deprived communities worldwide are benefiting from the increased availability of computers.
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With the economy slowly turning up, upgrading hardware has been on businesses radar in the past 12 months as their number two priority.
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LOWELL -- Someone pitches a laptop computer, and what happens to the plastic casing? Chances are it ends up in a landfill, adding to the toxic swill.
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Researchers at the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick, UK, along with PVAXX Research &amp; Development, have devised a way to recycle discarded mobile telephones.
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Four states have approved electronics recycling laws, and a federal legislator has reintroduced a bill that would impose an upfront recycling fee on the cost of laptop PCs and other devices.
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(InfoWorld) - In late 2000, Union Bank of California concluded that it was time to refresh its desktop PCs every four years, based on findings from a PC Total Cost of Ownership Study. This meant that 200 PCs would have to be retired every month. Unfortunately, there was no strategy in place for the task, or even a designated person or department to manage the systems. "Until then there was no process for disposing of PCs," says Julie LeDuc, IT group purchasing manager at Union Bank. "Each department would do its own thing, either storing them in warehouses, saving them for contingency purposes, or simply disposing of them." With a mandated company policy of environmental friendliness and the rumblings of the Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley acts, LeDuc knew the company couldn't simply have the machines shipped to the local junkyard where anyone could harvest them for sensitive data. It was time for a corporate asset-recovery strategy to ensure that the machines were retired in a secure and eco-friendly manner. After considering several alternatives, Union Bank chose Intechra, a growing national asset-disposition firm, and continues to enlist its services today. "They handle everything from our PCs to notebooks, printers, servers, monitors, telephones, scanners, and projectors," LeDuc says. After Union Bank does a preliminary disk wipe, Intechra's logistics team comes out to shrink-wrap and pack the equipment onto pallets and ship it all to its facilities, where it performs several subsequent disk wipes and tests everything. Usable PCs are either made available for reuse to Union Bank employees, donated to charity, or refurbished and sold on the market. Unusable equipment is disassembled for whatever usable parts can be sold, and the rest is recycled where possible so the materials can be used in other products. Waking up to e-waste Union Bank's asset-recovery awakening is typical of many larger companies today. "We see a new interest in e-waste recovery, thanks to all the recent debates about climate change and global warming," says IDC Analyst David Daoud. "Large corporations have decided that it's to their interest to tackle environmental e-waste issues and are competing with each other to reduce their environmental footprint." The e-waste problem is big and growing. According to IDC, the U.S. installed base of PCs is expected to grow from 280 million in 2006 to 404 million in 2010, with 237.5 million PCs expected to be retired between 2005 and 2010. In 2006 alone, 30.7 million commercial PCs, or 70 percent of the total commercial installed base, were retired. Yet IDC estimates that only 33 percent of U.S. companies, mostly large enterprises, have made use of the asset disposal industry. In the European Union the number is closer to 40 percent.  That's unfortunate, because the increasing number of retired PCs that end up in landfills results in more toxic pollution. PCs and monitors, especially old ones, contain a multitude of hazardous substances: lead, which can cause brain and kidney damage in children; mercury, which can cause nervous system and kidney damage; as well as cadmium, BFRs (brominated flame retardants), and PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which are known to cause health problems such as cancer, respiratory illness, and reproductive damage and are able to accumulate in the human body and travel long distances through air and water when not disposed of properly. Notably, legislators have been laying down regulations to rein in e-waste, which gives companies further cause to embrace IT asset recovery practices. The European Union has taken the lead on the federal level with its WEEE (The Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations, which require electronic manufacturers to take on the ecologically responsible disposition of the equipment they sell. Further, the laws require companies to eliminate several environmentally hazardous substances. Moreover, a proposed REACH policy (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) would create an even tougher regulatory framework for chemicals if it is passed. Regulations regarding e-waste disposal have also passed in several states, including California, Washington, Maine, and Maryland, and more are in the works in Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Hand in hand with environmental concerns of e-waste disposal are security and privacy issues. "When we got into this business, companies were spending thousands of dollars on firewalls but giving away their PCs," saysIntechra CEO Chip Slack.  Several federal and state regulations now make it the corporate user's responsibility to protect the privacy of customer data at every stage, including during the disposal process. Laws in more than 20 states mandate that all the affected clients and consumers must be notified if any customer information gets outside of the custody or control of a company. Along with proper environmental disposal of systems, many companies, particularly in the financial and health fields, now have to prove that all sensitive customer or patient data is eradicated according to strict state and federal requirements. What goes around, comes around Asset recovery providers range in the U.S. from the principal system vendors â including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, and Sun -- to scores of local specialty providers, to an emerging class of regional, national, and global providers, such as Redemtech, Intechra, TechTurn, and NextPhase.  The latter have been on a buying binge, acquiring local providers to expand their reach. In many cases the major system vendors partner with various local and regional providers to broaden their reach as well, as one of the most expensive parts of the disposal process is transport. For example, Leduc claims that Union Bank's recovery costs were reduced by 25 percent when Intechra opened a facility in Phoenix and PCs no longer had to be shipped from California to Columbus. The services provided by the hardware vendors differ in subtle ways. IBM and HP run their asset-recovery services as part of their leasing and financing operations. Indeed, leasing can be a good solution for companies that want as little as possible to do with asset recovery, as it places responsibility for environmentally sound disposal with the vendor rather than the lessor, though the lessor retains responsibility for protecting user data. Both vendors can build asset recovery into the leasing cost. Dell's asset recovery services are part of its managed services offering. HP and IBM will take non-leased equipment and equipment purchased from other vendors, though in HP's case, only as part of an upgrade to the company's hardware. HP will apply what it considers the trade-in value of third-party equipment toward a new hardware purchase. Dell takes third-party equipment as well and will either cut a check for the value or apply the value to a new purchase. Sun takes only its own equipment and does so free of charge, with no value applied to a purchase. Contract arrangements also vary. Most of the vendors work on fee-for-service as well as long-term-contract bases. In some cases, such as with IBM Global Services, disposal can be part of a more comprehensive asset-management offering that helps the customer take inventory and determine appropriate refresh strategies. Vendors then attempt to reap whatever commercial value they can out of the PCs they collect, either by refurbishing and selling them or disassembling them and selling the parts, sometimes through a broker. All will enter into a profit-sharing arrangement with the customer. Dell boasts that 90 percent of the sales profits go to the customer. Intechra gives a 60 percent figure. Other vendors are not so public about their sharing ratio. Obviously, PCs that are refreshed on a regular two-, three-, or even four-year schedule and immediately sent to the vendor are more likely to get some return than PCs are that five years old or more, or those that sit in a corporate warehouse for months or years first. All the vendors claim that they do not ship equipment, either PCs or parts, overseas unless they can verify that it is in working and saleable condition. The younger the PCs, the higher the possibility that recovery will end up being no cost after profit sharing or might even result in an overall return for the customer. All the vendors and most of the larger third-party services provide the customer with serialized reporting on each and every asset, including whether and when it was resold or recycled, and certificates confirming data destruction. In most cases the vendor recommends that the customer do at least one data wipe on its end and/or disable the disk with special utilities or by driving a nail through the hard drive. Then the vendor will transport the equipment to one of its own sites or partner sites and do subsequent wipes, including anywhere from three to seven wipes according to customer and Department of Defense specifications. However, vendors are also open to providing data wipe services on the customer site for an extra fee. IBM and HP have their own recovery and recycling capabilities but also partner with third parties in several locations. Proceed with caution It can be tempting to look at asset recovery as a cost and choose the least-expensive vendor as an asset-recovery partner. However, experts agree that reducing risk should be the primary criterion when devising a strategy: the risk of fines, lawsuits, or damaged reputation. That's why in large enterprises, increasingly, responsibility for asset-recovery has moved beyond the department level and the IT division, to the CXO level -- often to the CIO, CFO, or even CEO. It makes sense for companies to have a centralized recovery strategy so that one department doesn't get the entire organization in trouble with the law or the media. Due diligence means coming up with your company's own set of requirements for asset recovery, based on company philosophy and standards, as well as relevant local, state, and federal regulations, then investigating whether your recovery partner, and that partner's recovery partners, meet those requirements. A global enterprise will obviously have to consider policies and regulations abroad. "You have to ask a provider questions like, 'How do you manage your partners and hold them accountable?' " says Joe Strathmann, Dell's senior manager of worldwide asset recovery. "What is your audit protocol for your partners and your partners' partners?" If the vendor has a high percentage of its own recovery and recycling facilities, that may be a key measure of comfort level. It's also important to do your own checking. "We recommend that you go out and visit the providers and kick the tires," says James O'Grady, director of technology value solutions at HP. Even though Intechra has its own third-party auditor and auditing process, Union Bank does its own periodic audits, mostly for security purposes, to ensure that disks are being wiped properly. Transportation is not only a cost, but a risk as well. It's important to understand what background checks are done on the persons driving the trucks the company uses. And it's worth checking what percentage of e-waste handled by your partner on average ends up as landfill. For example IBM claims that number is .78 percent. Slack claims that Intechra's goal is zero-percent landfill and jokes that there's more waste from the company's lunchroom than from its asset-recovery process. Another aspect to consider is the efforts your PC vendor puts in at the manufacturing end to make its equipment easy to disassemble and recycle. Among other things, this means using as few screws and plastics as possible. Finally, little things can make a big difference. LeDuc was sold simply on the professionalism of the people Intechra sent to its 320 bank branches to pick up equipment, which is important for bank offices with a high public profile. "It shouldn't be like calling a moving company," LeDuc says. Whatever approach your company ends up taking to IT asset recovery, the benefits are clear: Organizations stand to gain peace of mind that the data on their retired systems won't fall into the wrong hands, higher ROI on their hardware investments, and a jumpstart on forthcoming e-waste legislation. The environmental benefits are green icing on the cake.
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NEW YORK -- When Office Depot Inc. stores ran an electronics recycling drive last summer that accepted everything from cellphones to televisions, some stores were overwhelmed by the amount of e-trash they received.
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Major vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony are working together to push through a legislative mandate in the U.S. that will make it easier for users to recycle their consumer electronics.The mandate calls for companies to cut&#160;consumer electronics recycling&#160;costs and to make their reuse and recycling the highest priority when manufacturing products, panelists said during a talk at the International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.The cost to consumers of recycling products, including things like collection fees, is high, the panelists said, and some manufacturers have taken advantage of weak recycling laws to manufacture products that cannot be effectively recycled or reused.Some companies have standards in place to manufacture products that are easy to recycle, but others hope to drive down their own costs by adopting lower production standards, the panelists said.A legislative mandate would create a level playing field for manufacturers, said Tod Arbogast, director of sustainable business at Dell. A common approach to designing for recycling will promote the production of products that can be recycled and drive down manufacturing costs through effective product design and distribution.As an example of what can be done, Sony&#39;s new OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV is designed to be disassembled by common household tools, said Douglas Smith, Sony&#39;s director of corporate environmental affairs. It is a step toward making products that can be easily recycled, he said.To be effective, recycling processes will be needed to convert used components back to original raw material for other products, followed by reuse or resale. Production costs can be cut through recycling and reusing materials rather than extracting and processing raw materials, said Dell&#39;s Arbogast.&quot;There are significant economic benefits in doing so as well as significant environmental benefits, which I think are often forgotten,&quot; Arbogast said.HP is adopting standards to recycle printers with plastic that doesn&#39;t convert to raw material, said Renee St. Denis, director of recycling at HP. The end-of-life resale value of printers after seven to 10 years of usage is minimal, but the high cost of plastics versus other printer components has made the company come up with innovative reuses of those plastics, she said.Dell already follows a Texas state law that requires PC manufacturers to dispose of products as easily as they are placed in the market, Arbogast said. The company accepts used Dell PCs for free via mail, Arbogast said.Sony is taking full responsibility for the products its manufactures -- cell phones, TVs and other devices -- by offering the ability to recycle them at no cost, Smith said.In March, Sony will launch a program in the U.S. where consumers can recycle consumer electronics for free by dropping them off at locations within a 20-mile radius of any SonyStyle store. Though the company has only 55 SonyStyle stores in the U.S., the company hopes to expand the effort by involving its distributors and other companies.Sony takes full responsibility for products it manufactures and has already recycled a giant TV screen belonging to the city of Tampa Bay for free, and the company wants to deliver the same recycling ability to users, said Smith.
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The fine holiday tradition of returns goes high tech. Here's how to unload unwanted plastic.
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production
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More and more resellers of used computer equipment are charging to erase data that may still be left on hard drives.