End-of-Life IT Hardware: Four Strategies for Handling E-Waste Responsibly

The world generated over 50 million tons of electronic waste in 2019, and the amount of waste generated rises every year as people purchase more gadgets to make their lives easier. However, very little e-waste generated is sustainably recycled, resulting in an ecological disaster we cannot control. On Earth Day, we gauge from experts how businesses can reduce e-waste generation and meet their ESG objectives.

In recent years, plenty of discussions around end-of-life hardware have been focused on the security risks arising from the way they are discarded or disposed of. Devices like hard drives, pen drives, PCs, laptops, and other storage devices often contain a lot of data even after being wiped. This may lead to accidental data leaks, especially of business-critical information. Today, many solutions exist that enable organizations safely wipe their devices before auctioning them on eBay.

However, another burning question, which you’ll only hear about on Earth Day and World Environment Day, is what happens to the vast dumps of end-of-life devices discarded by organizations every year? We’re not just considering IT hardware but also other electronic products like headphones, speakers, power banks, chargers, plugs, routers, batteries, webcams, and connected devices. All these add up to a mountain of electronic waste that is often not disposed of as it should, causing a heavy toll on the environment.

The United Nations revealed that in 2019 alone, 53.6 million tons of e-waste was generated globally, and only 17.4% of the dump could be recycled. In Asia and the U.S., only 11.3% and 15% of e-waste were recycled in 2019, though Europe raised the global average by recycling 42.5% of e-waste. The reality becomes much more troubling if we consider the amount of e-waste generated each year will doubleOpens a new window every 15 years.

So, what happens to the rest of it? Countries that cannot recycle all of their e-waste themselves ship the rest of it to third-world countries that process vast volumes of waste in exchange for money. However, their waste processing capabilities and technologies aren’t world-class, and workers, water bodies, and the soil are exposed to highly harmful materials. 

A United Nations studyOpens a new window found that around “50 tons of mercury and 71 kt of BFR plastics are found in globally undocumented flows of e-waste annually” and that “a total of 98 Mt of CO2-equivalents were released into the atmosphere from discarded fridges and air-conditioners.” 

The study also found that “the value of raw materials in the global e-waste generated in 2019 is equal to approximately $57 billion.” So, if you don’t see two million discarded smartphones in a landfill on your city’s outskirts, it doesn’t mean the e-waste has been recycled. It just indicates it has been shipped somewhere else.

See More: How Supply Chain Woes Are Affecting PC Vendors and What’s Next for the Industry

What Can Organizations Do to Tackle the Looming E-waste Disaster?

1. Doubling down on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies

Michael Jack, CRO and co-founder of Datadobi, says that with climate change occurring quicker than expected, businesses are increasingly being judged on whether or not they are meeting their ESG objectives. “For almost every major corporation in the world, conforming to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies has become a top priority,” he says.

“A holistic approach to ESG involves enterprises being encouraged and enabled to move away from legacy models where data is stored in a digital ‘landfill’ and is taking up space, money, and precious resources and giving very little in return.” 

“Organizations should be using unstructured data management solutions that allow them to monitor their key ESG indicators. They should take action to achieve their targets by moving data to more carbon-friendly and less polluting storage, deleting redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT) data, and by enabling consolidation, reuse, and earlier shutdown of hardware. By doing so, they can make the Earth a little bit greener and deliver on ESG objectives,” he adds.

2. Leveraging AI to meet sustainability goals

Anne-Laure Thieullent, vice president and AI & Analytics Group Offer leader at Capgemini, believes machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can help organizations fast-track their environment-friendly initiatives. 

“Our research has shown that AI-powered climate action projects have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 13%, improved power efficiency by 11%, and reduced waste by 12% since 2017. Organizations should not miss the opportunity to prioritize the deployment of AI solutions to address their sustainable goals. Yet our research shows that only a fraction of organizations are actively using this technology to its full potential,” she says

She suggests that decision-makers across all organizations should align the use of data and AI with their strategic corporate agenda, with sustainability at the heart of it. “Without this clear direction, there is a missing link between intention, technology prioritization and execution. Frameworks now exist to educate, build awareness, establish scalable operating models, and manage data to deliver tangible business outcomes with AI applied to climate action. And of course, this requires AI solutions to be designed, built, deployed and monitored with sustainable design principles to ensure overall positive environmental impact.”

See More: Why the Future of Work Depends on PC Fleet Stability and Predictability

3. Making the most of end of life hardware

Sam Curry, the chief security officer at Cybereason, says that simply selling off old and obsolete hardware is something businesses should avoid. Firstly, it opens up the possibility of significant data leaks as old storage devices that are not in use could still contain sensitive data. “Deleting data is notoriously difficult. Most people don’t understand and probably shouldn’t have to understand how indexing works, but most so-called deletion just removes pointers to data and not the data itself. When you put that file in the trash, the data itself isn’t touched, just the information about it,” he says.

“Even wiping tools often do a poor or partial job, and for a true forensics expert, there are still traces and memory at the physical level of data. Destruction of the device doesn’t make the data go away either; sure, parts of it might be damaged or hard to read because the media can’t be plugged in easily. The data, however, persists.

“The conventional best practices for securely decommissioning drives before disposal are to get professionals that you trust (and that’s a big deal and another subject) to really wipe and rewrite every trace *three times*, which feels a little like overkill to laypeople. It does matter, though, when the data you have is in trust from and for other people.”

Another factor associated with selling off obsolete hardware is its impact on the environment. “As a company, you’re selling in bulk, and that’s impractical. Most importantly, the components in hard drives can harm the environment if not disposed of properly and have huge value to be reclaimed and re-used both for the environment and in the spirit of frugality with natural resources. 

“If you’re going to do this, set up a process as a company for it or go to a professional for wiping as an individual. There’s definitely opportunity here for enterprising people who want to set up secure wiping services and to build this into recycling and operations processes in IT,” Curry adds.

4. Leveraging specialized recycling and recovery services at scale

 Every major organization has thousands of outdated and unnecessary hardware products stored in basements that need to be disposed of to save on the cost of maintaining the inventory. Simply selling off the hardware on eBay, as described above, could expose an organization to data leaks or harm the environment. Such being the case, it is always prudent to take the help of specialized recycling and recovery services to ensure old hardware is taken care of in a sustainable manner.

For example, Dell offers proper disposal of IT equipment for businesses through its on-site data sanitization and hard-drive shredding services. The company’s Asset Recovery services help organizations receive value from existing IT assets and implement sustainable recycling and recovery services at scale.

“Businesses understand the urgency of the e-waste crisis and want to adopt more circular IT strategies, including the resale, repair, or recycling of their end of use equipment,” says Stuart Nyemecz, vice president & the head of the UK enterprise sales at Dell Technologies. “Still, we know the risks associated with data security and environmental liability can feel overwhelming.

“Worries about IT systems ending up in a landfill or data falling into the wrong hands are enough to keep the best IT decision-maker awake at night. Our modernized, simplified Asset Recovery Service offers customers peace of mind, helping them retire IT equipment securely and sustainably and unlock the value in those old devices for future innovation.”

Do you think the world can achieve 100% e-waste recycling by the next decade? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!

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