Ask before handing over Electronic Waste

We are all interested and most of us are worried about the secret life of used electronics. We all want information on this issue and that's the good news. The bad news is that there continues to be significant confusion about what actually happens.

Common followup questions followed the lines of: "XYZ handles my e-waste and pays me to take this stuff off my hands. He is obviously making money, so things must be Okay, isn't it?

Not necessarily. The unfortunate truth is that there are many perfectly legal and profitable means to dispose of your used electronics. Unless you ask the right questions, you will never know and you could be incurring risks that you're not even conscious of.

Unless you're working with recycling companies that, at least, have either R2 or e-Stewards certifications, here's what happens all too often: XYZ pays you to take your used electronics and renovates and resells what it can, leaving a mountain of stuff that doesn't meet what's known as the "tech-cut line." This equipment usually has no value as re-usable products and either will be disassembled for its commodities to make new products. And, finally XYZ sells this pile, generally by the pallet, to the highest bidder.

XYZ can pay extra than others will because it doesn't have to meet third-party certification standards and will reprocess in the cheapest way it possibly can. This usually means it's heading overseas to places where rules and regulations, if they exist, are rarely imposed, and evil things will happen to people and the environment. XYZ is able to pay you what it does because it assurances itself higher margins by vending its e-scrap by the pallet to whoever will pay the most.

It all works pronounced until you consider the environmental, reputational and social problems it may create. People, those are involved in making decisions on IT asset disposition needs to ask themselves these two questions.

1. Is it good for our enterprise to dispose of our used IT assets without assurances that all of it is being controlled in the correct way in every stage of the recycling process?
2. Together with our ethical responsibilities to act responsibly, are we putting our organization's name and data at risk by not knowing where it's all going?

Do a favour, when disposing of electronic waste and electronic surplus, work only with recyclers that, at minimum, are either R2 or e-Stewards certified and are in good position with regulatory agencies. This will ensure you won't have to answer these two questions in a way that will create suffering for you and others in your society and across the world.