Businesses around the world are keeping pace with rapid advancements in technology. They are upgrading their IT equipment every so often. Largely, IT assets comprise PCs, hard disk drives, smartphones, servers, monitors, and peripherals like keyboards and mice. This leads to the generation of enormous amounts of e-waste and they have to ask themselves a particular question frequently: how to discard these heaps of e-junk? What are the ethical practices for it asset disposal?
Understanding the Need for IT Asset Disposal (ITAD)
To understand the requirement for ITAD, we first need to consider the life cycle of an EEE (electrical and electronic equipment). A device has roughly 5 life phases, namely, installation, usage, deterioration, discontinuation, and disposal. In the present day scenario, the average life of electronic products is around 5 years approximately. After devices become outdated and beyond repair, it is not reasonable for businesses to store them or throw them away in trash cans. Additionally, companies in present times hold and analyze vast amounts of quantitative and qualitative information about their consumers daily. Some companies make profits only by selling consumer data to other companies. All this can lead to security breach cases and underscores the need for ethical disposal of IT appliances.
A Step-By-Step Guide on How to Dispose E-Waste Ethically
Here’s a comprehensive guide to navigating how it works:
- Monitor all your IT assets- These may include desktops, mobile phones, hard drives, fax machines, monitors, printers, UPS, file servers, and so on. You can make a list of the assets before beginning. Determine their condition. Classify them into different categories: reusable, recyclable, or disposable. Reusable appliances can be separately sent for refurbishment and/or resale. There should be a standard IT asset audit workflow in place with pre-defined goals and scope for IT asset disposal. Audits can be done by automation software, external organizations or internal teams based on your requirements.
- Secure your Data with Advanced Sanitization Techniques- This step ensures that your data is safely erased from the devices. Usually, there are 4 types of methods followed for it: data masking, physical destruction, data wiping and crypto erase. It is different from deleting sensitive information as data deleted can still be retrieved by a hacker through some pathways. Effective data sanitization renders data unrecoverable. A new law, The Digital Personal Data Protection Act was enacted in India in 2023. It lays down restrictions and rules for Indian companies that deal with sensitive user information. It is associated with data protection overall, entailing data wiping and data minimization.
- Determine Reuse or Recycling Options- Pin down the devices that need refurbishment and send them for the same accordingly. For equipment of no viable use, seek ethical disposal methods such as certified e-waste recycling. WEEE, i.e. waste from electronic and electrical equipment is divided into 2 categories: POP (where persistent organic pollutants are at high concentration) and hazardous waste (where toxic elements are beyond a certain concentration). The IT and telecommunication equipment containing POPs is both hazardous and POP and needs appropriate disposal methods. Even recycling may not be the best alternative for such items. Hence, safe and secure disposal of such IT assets become even more crucial.
- Seek Out a Certified Recycling Service– Start by contacting your municipality and enquiring about e-waste management services. Alternatively, approach private companies if they are reliable ITAD service providers. Research through their expertise, measures they use, certifications they hold, and the importance they place on ethical methods. With this, we can determine the right kind of it asset disposal providers with high accountability.
- Create a Detailed Document on the Disposal Process- Maintain a detailed record of the disposal procedure. It will serve as a validation of the destruction process of digital data and assets. Be it municipal institutions or private recycling companies, all are encouraged to maintain records of their e-waste treatment processes. They also need to provide a certificate of destruction.
- Train Employees about Ethical Destruction Methods- Educate employees about the importance of ethical IT asset disposal. This training should cover data security practices, the environmental impact of e-waste, and the organization’s policies regarding asset disposal.
