Peddle recycling

By offering to recycle obsolete kit as a service, resellers can benefit in many ways

Despite the growing noise surrounding the unfortunately named Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, which comes into effect next year, UK resellers have still not woken up to the lucrative opportunities of recycling.

WEEE makes IT makers responsible for collecting and recycling electronic equipment, and has been brought in to cope with the six million tonnes of electrical equipment that is disposed of each year.

The directive also complements other EU measures on landfill and incineration of waste, according to a new industry report, PC Heaven: what happens to technology in the afterlife, commissioned by business availability service provider Synstar.

Currently, only 22 per cent of European organisations admit to recycling, and most kit gets dumped. Synstar estimates that by the end of next year up to 315 million computers will be obsolete, but so far very few companies are taking advantage of this opportunity.

Although there is very little money to be made from obsolete kit, the service for collection and delivery can be lucrative and can add good margin to a sale.

In addition, resellers may be able, as in the used car business, to give hidden discounts to customers by offering a higher trade-in value for old kit.

For example, if the trade-in value for a PII machine is £20, resellers could offer £50 for the machine as a trade-in if they were offered the contract to replace the obsolete equipment.

This service could prove to be a key price differentiator when competing with rivals. And an integrated service approach is key to making it work, rather than the trader approach, according to recycling experts.

As well as the collection and environmental disposal of the kit, resellers could also offer safely to delete corporate information from old equipment or migrate it to replacement machines.

This would give the end-user peace of mind that they won't end up like Paul McCartney, whose bank details were recovered from PCs decommissioned by the then merchant bank Morgan Grenfell.