PC recycling: What to do before throwing out the old clunker?

Adria Ferguson

According to the National Safety Council (of the US), an estimated 20 million PCs are becoming obsolete in that country every year, which is accounting for about two million tons of trash per year. Companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have had electronics (mainly PC, printer and mainframe) recycling facilities for a number of years now, but the recycling programs have not been widely marketed. IBM’s facility was established primarily for mainframe parts replacement and recycling and has expanded to include a larger variety of enterprise equipment. HP has had a relationship with Noranda (a Canadian-based mining and metals company), and has established recycling facilities in both San Jose and Roseville, CA (in addition to various printer cartridge recycling facilities). Dell recently announced a partnership with electronics recycler Unicor (also known as the Federal Prison Industries), whereby the company will accept used PCs that will be recycled by prison inmates.

Organizations that would like to be environmentally conscious should make an effort to resell or recycle their old computer equipment. However, there are many issues that clients should consider before selling, donating or recycling equipment. The first issue deals with security; before handing over computer equipment, all information from the hard drive, cache, etc. should be completely erased, and this applies to organizations returning leased equipment as well. Many asset management firms will perform these functions as part of a service, but to ensure that sensitive information does not get into the hands of the wrong person, it’s usually best to do it yourself. This is especially true when convicted felons are the ones recycling your equipment.

Dell states that the hard drives of PCs sent to them will be destroyed separately from the recycling operations in which the prisoners disassemble the PCs; however, it’s always better to be careful in such circumstances. Cleaning the system before it’s shipped out and inquiring into the recycling procedures are effective ways of limiting liability.

Another issue is that of recycling monitors (which are made from cathode ray tubes (CRTs)); some states consider the disposal of CRTs a hazardous waste (due to the lead content in the phosphors) and, therefore, companies must pay to have them disposed of properly. Many PC vendors will charge an additional fee of $5 to $35 per monitor depending on volume for CRT recycling (which they usually send off to a CRT recycler such as Envirocycle, which processes the CRTs in accordance with environmental standards). Companies are encouraged to find out exactly how the equipment will be "recycled" or disposed of prior to forming any agreements. Some companies offer cheaper CRT disposal options (on average it only costs $2 to $12 depending on volume) to ship the monitors to landfills in China, Vietnam or India; however, that is not an environmentally friendly method of disposing monitors. In addition to using CRT recyclers, companies are encouraged to contact their local and state disposal operations because many areas (especially in California and Massachusetts) have special periods when they will accept CRTs free of charge. One useful site for CRT disposal options is www.wastecap.org/wastecap/commodities/crt/crt.htm.

The process of recycling computer equipment is a difficult industry from which to make money (especially since many of the precious metals and consistent grade plastics that were once used have been replaced with less expensive materials, although this might change with the introduction of more advanced circuitry using copper and silicon). Therefore, it often costs more money to recycle the equipment than is derived from the material value. Many of the vendors are covering the recycling costs, but clients must still pay for shipping, which will probably continue to inhibit end users from recycling computer equipment. Because of the shipment costs, companies are encouraged to consider recycling PCs not on a rolling basis, but about every six months or whenever a significant volume has accumulated. If the company wants to resell (a working PC), the sooner it is donated or sold, the better the chances of it being bought or useful as a donated product (many charities won’t accept PCs that are older than two to three years). Another option, especially for large organizations, it is to auction off the equipment on sites such as www.dovebid.com. Unfortunately, computer equipment recycling is still at a stage where not only do users not get paid for recycling, but they incur a slight cost for being environmentally cautious. Fortunately, it seems that the processes for recycling computer equipment is improving and hopefully users will soon be able to dispose of equipment properly without the added end-of-life costs.