WASTE & RECYCLING
ARE YOU SAFELY DISPOSING
YOUR IT EQUIPMENT?
T
he IT and electronic equipment
Neal Saunders, MD, Dataserv
is an integral part of any
organisational infrastructure because there may be value in it. They will accreditations ISO9001, 14001,
and as such requires simply extract the valuable equipment and 18001 and ISO 27001, the latter
maintenance and pass on the residue product which has no by far being the most difficult to
management. Part of the value. The cheapest way of getting rid of achieve. This causes us as a
management is the disposal of the this type is to sell it by the container to company to look very seriously at
equipment at the end of its useful life. China and India, where it will be the various risks we face and
Gone are the days when equipment was dismantled in the horrendous conditions invest to develop procedures to
thrown into skips to be sorted out at a using child labour. A guide to this practice minimise these. I would
letter date, there is now European wide can be found at www.STEP-initiative.org, a recommend that all management
legislation to control how we deal with this UN sponsored initiative aimed at stopping organisations carry out a risk assessment
type of waste. The legislation is known as this type of activity. of data within their business and develop
WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic If your organisation does not want to a data security policy that deals with it.
Equipment) and basically there is now a contribute to this practice, and I would Systems and media being disposed of
requirement from the user or suggest it could be very damaging to the by an organisation need at some point to
management company to dispose of their image of the company if it does, then it have their data erased, or indeed the
surplus equipment in a compliant manner must be sure that the organisation it medium on which it is being held,
and keep records to prove this. disposes through has a full audit trail of destroyed if the risk assessment denotes
The actual WEEE legislation is very who does the final recycling. It is actually this.
ambiguous and has led to simpler if the organisation actually does its
misunderstanding of what the own recycling in house as we do and can
manufacturers are obliged to do provide an auditable explanation of where
regarding the take back of old ICT everything end up.
equipment, the most popular We need to look at the financial
misconception is the idea that when a revenue that can be generated for the
manufacturer or reseller sells a new item it product, once the product has been
is obliged to collect an old one on a like audited, tested and data wiped it needs to
for like basis. This is not correct, following be sold for its “fair market value”. Any
recent clarification from the DTI the reputable organisation will be able to
producers obligations are to be produce a guide for you as to what they
responsible for the recycling of its market will expect to achieve in terms of sale
share of equipment, it is not responsible value for the product and these can be
for collecting it from the customers compared so that you can choose the
premises, it can nominate where the company that can offer you the best value
customer should deliver it to. back.
Dataserv
Now that we have established that the In summary, I would suggest the Within our own organisation we have
Staines
WEEE legislation will not be a free answer following as a minimum checklist to a policy that all our own server drives are
to B2B ICT redundant product we need to choosing a supplier of this service. “degaussed” a service that we supply to a
consider what should be done with it. • Are they an established number of our customers both on-site and
When disposing of the equipment it is organisation with a proven track at our own facility, this renders the drive
likely that it will be a mixture of some that record? and the data inoperable, however our
will only be suitable for recycling and • Do they have 3 or more ISO assessment was that the small loss of
some that is less than four or five years accreditations that relate to the value of the drive was inconsequential
old will retain some commercial value. core business? compared to risk. For normal desktop
There are many organisations that are • Do they carry out their own equipment the current best practice is to
interested in your redundant equipment recycling, if not, where are the use a data erasure software tool, we have
downstream audits and proof of standardised across our 10 EMEA
final destinations? processing locations on Blancco which is
• What is the level of data wiping widely regarded as the world leader in its
provided and how is it recorded in field, this is a guaranteed process that
order to be able to prove it has also is recordable and thus we are able to
been done? produce “certificates of destruction” to our
• Where is their guide to the returns clients for their data and a full audit trail
that can be expected from resale of how that data was handled.
and where is the evidence they In summary, risk avoidance and
are actually achieving these compliance are the key drivers and any
values? solution an organisation implements must
At Dataserv, we have four reflect this.
Dataserv PC test
SUSTAINABLE FM | OCTOBER 2007
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