What to do with your old IT equipment

Reduce, reuse, recycle. This term is now fully in the mainstream yet, even up to quite recently, disposing of old IT equipment was not really something that people gave much thought about. Often it was simply thrown out with other waste which was then sent on to landfill sites around the country - in excess of 1 million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste are reported to be dumped in this way each year.

The introduction of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive in January, 2007 was an attempt to change this practice by making manufacturers and retailers financially responsible for the collection, recycling and disposal of electronic waste. (Users of electrical and electronic equipment, for their part, are now required to recycle and dispose of waste separately from other waste categories)

Basic WEEE guidelines on responsibility for disposal are as follows:

Replacing equipment bought before 13/08/2005?	Your new supplier is responsible for the disposal and recycling of your old equipment
Disposing or replacing equipment bought after 13/08/2005?	The manufacturer or producer of your equipment is responsible for its disposal
Disposing of equipment bought before 13/08/2005?	If you do not intend replacing the equipment then you become responsible for its proper disposal

What else can you do?

This is all very well but how does it fit in with the ideas of reducing and reusing? And what happens if you don't have an agreement with your supplier or if you only have a few items? Here are 5 things you can do:

Re-use the equipment

Replacing a desktop computer? How about providing a 'guest PC' for general employee use? This is something that works well in small manufacturing companies - you could provide staff Internet access during break times or provide them with Intranet information and company news.

No longer have a use for that old server in the corner? How about re-using it as a low-cost Internet firewall or router? Open-source firewalls such as Untangle or even something like Microsoft's ISA Server can work quite well on older hardware. Alternatively use it as a spare file server for hosting your backups.

Reward your employees

It may no longer cut it as an office powerhouse PC but that old desktop could probably serve well for home use making it ideal as a basic computer for kids. Whilst it won't run the latest games it could be the perfect solution for web browsing, email and social networking.

Give the equipment to charity

Nationally, Computer Aid International run a 'not-for-profit' service that provides refurbished computers to developing countries for use in education, health and charitable organisations. They are fully WEEE compliant and the service is free - all you need to do is deliver the machines to their recycling centre.

At a local level, you might wish to consider the Pass IT On charity that distributes IT equipment to people with disabilities living within the EH postal code area. Similar to Computer Aid they will also conduct secure erasure of your hard disk data - all that they ask is if you can deliver the machines to them. They can be contacted on 0131 476 1645.

If you do give to charity remember to include keyboards, mice and power cables if you can - a lot of equipment is donated with these missing, something which makes life more difficult for the charities concerned.

Take it to a local recycling centre

If returning equipment to the supplier is not feasible or practical then you can take it to a local recycling centre for disposal. In West Lothian the Community Recycling Centre at Blackburn caters for IT & telecoms equipment whilst centres at Broxburn, Linlithgow, Livingston and Whitburn can be used for computer monitors.

If you are a business you will need to pre-purchase a permit from West Lothian Council's Waste Management Service (Deans Depot) at a cost of £20 including VAT.

Use a recycling collection company

If you have a sufficiently large amount of equipment and no other option but to dispose of it then a recycling collection company may represent the best way to go. If you do have it collected then be sure to check that they have a relevant certificate in Information Security Management - this should give you extra peace of mind that any disposal will be secure. Waste Aware Business has more information and a searchable index of recycling collection companies.

A final word of warning

Whatever you decide to do with your old IT equipment make sure that you take adequate steps to erase any data contained on the hard disks - you shouldn't assume that a charity or collection company will do this for you. They do claim to and whilst I have no reason to doubt them it's always better to be safe than sorry

Finally, by erase I mean ERASE!! Simply deleting files from the hard disk via Windows Explorer is in no way sufficient. Use of a dedicated disk utility such as DBAN or Diskpart is highly recommended.

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