Three Ps of Proper IT Disposal: Prevention, Protection, and Price

By Kyle Marks

September 11, 2006

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Amazingly, very few organizations in the United States have a formal policy on where or how to recycle or dispose of their information technology (IT) equipment. Even fewer keep track of what happens to e-waste after it is out of their possession. Some organizations donate their unwanted IT equipment to charities. Others simply give away their obsolete equipment to electronics recyclers in exchange for a Certificate of Disposal or Destruction ý essentially, a paper promise from the recycler that the company properly handled your e-waste.

If circumstances turn out that your recycler doesn't properly handle your e-waste, your organization may be at serious risk that critical and confidential data will be recovered from hard drives, or that obsolete, hazardous equipment may turn up in unregulated landfills or third-world countries. And, more significantly, your organization may be 100 percent liable for the consequences.

Most experts agree that outsourcing IT disposal makes sense. However, selecting the right vendor to handle this important job is much easier said than done. Today, there are more than 1,000 companies in the U.S. handling IT disposal and new vendors seem to emerge every week. It is difficult to measure the quality of an IT disposal vendor without spending significant time qualifying a vendor's processes up-front and then continuously monitoring performance on an on-going basis. When qualifying a potential disposal vendor, or evaluating the performance of your existing vendor, it may be helpful to reference the three Ps of proper IT disposal: prevention, protection, and price. And ask the question: Does my IT disposal vendor address all three areas of concern?

Prevention

Due to the steep financial and legal downside, the risks associated with improper IT disposal could keep any executive awake at night. Organizations often outsource IT disposal to 1) eliminate the risk of damaging the environment or their reputation, 2) to avoid the backlash of dealing with a data security breach, or 3) to simply save money.

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