How to strike gold by going green
The safe and environmentally-friendly disposal of companies' old IT assets has become a big business in its own right, writes Tim Clements
Organisations increasingly need a strategy for the responsible disposal of IT assets. As companies replace aging systems, they face a real challenge – how to properly dispose of their IT assets when current methods are often costly, environmentally unfriendly, time intensive, or involve data risk (possibly leaving confidential data on systems).
For resellers and technology providers, the ability to offer a reverse supply chain that safely handles e-waste can be a differentiator. E-waste and IT asset disposal is a growing issue for governments around the world. All companies will soon begin to think strategically about planned IT asset disposal.
Up until recently, many organisations dealt with the issue by selling assets or throwing them away. That approach is no longer viable because impending regulation in the European Union (EU), US, Japan and other nations will mandate environmentally friendly and secure (from a data-privacy perspective) methods for retiring IT assets. Companies in the healthcare and financial services industry are dealing with an added layer of regulation that seeks to protect whatever patient and client data may be left on hard drives of disposed computers.
Indeed, examples of environmental requirements that have recently been implemented in the US and EU include:
Tighter controls on trans-border shipments of waste
Mandated levels of recycling and recovery
CRT’s banned from disposal inlandfills
Restricted use of hazardous substances in products
Advanced recycling fees collected at point-of-sale/lease
Environmental issues aside, companies that do not plan for proper IT disposal are not extracting the full value from their investment.
Many IT assets can be refurbished and resold. Often vendors are prepared to maintain the reverse supply chain for IT assets. Working with resellers and distributors, several vendors manage all aspects of the process. Many of them take in and refurbish equipment in recycling hubs. Community and local a uthority schemes and private companies also offer to take companies’ obsolete equipment for refurbishment and recycling.
A survey carried out by the Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) found that 45 per cent of data processing equipment, which includes PCs, laptops and printers, was refurbished or recycled. Recycling is already having considerable success, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Proper recycling not only makes sense for the environment, it is good business for all parties involved. Manufacturers, resellers and distributor partners can use recycling to create an opportunity to pay the former owner of the IT asset and help to offset the cost of the end-user’s new IT purchases or leases.
It is not only the largest corporate customers who need ready access to a reverse supply chain that meets environmental and privacy regulations. ,Smaller companies also have an urgent need for this service.
When you consider that 93 per cent of all removals are for PCs and that there are hundreds of millions of PCs due for retirement, it is clear that the recycling pie is ample enough for even the smallest reseller.