The Magnificent Seven

These tips can help your company better manage asset disposition.

Jason covers desktop applications and help desk utilities, including reviews geared toward the IT end-user support function. Jason is the PC infrastructure manager for Harcros Chemicals, a worldwide leader in chemical manufacturing and distribution.

Supporting PCs and notebooks has always been the bread and butter of most help desks. The bulk of an IT administrator's day is spent planning, supporting or replacing current hardware or software, leaving little time for anything else. But what's done with those computers after their usable life has a long-term environmental impact. Try these tips for responsible computer disposal.

1. Keep Data in Your Sights

While formatting drives and deleting partitions make it difficult for the average person to access any data left behind, savvy users can make quick work of recovering data because it isn't actually erased from the drive until it's overwritten. Use disk-wiping utilities that both erase and overwrite the newly freed space.

2. Secure Your Staging Area

Acknowledge and address loss prevention concerns within your school or district. Make sure there's reasonable physical security in place wherever you store old PCs. Even if those assets seem relatively worthless, they still contain sensitive data until technicians can find the time to properly clear them.

3. Consider an Employee Purchase Program

An employee purchase program is a great way to offload unwanted equipment while spreading good will at your organization. This solution won't cost your school or district anything out of pocket. The money you bring in from the sale can be used to cover any labor involved in re-imaging the computers back to their factory states and could ultimately help defray the cost of new PCs.

4. Know Your Recycler

Electronics recycling has quickly become a major industry; consequently, there are often many companies from which to choose. If your school or district decides to recycle, you should consider more than price alone. Investigate to ensure that the recycler is reputable and that recycling is carried out responsibly. Seek out an organization that employs a “zero landfill” policy, which minimizes the pollution created by your disposal. Also, if your recycler performs data erasure, make sure it complies with the Department of Defense 5220.22-M standard.

5. Pay It Forward

Donating old gear (typically less than 10 years old) to any number of nonprofit organizations can qualify your school or district for a tax deduction. There are many groups you can donate to directly, such as Goodwill Industries, which will then sell the equipment to fund programs that help those in need. You also can donate to an administrative organization such as Computers With Causes, which will in turn find a suitable home for your used equipment.

6. Know Your Local Environmental Regulations

When equipment is no longer serviceable or when recycling, sale or donation is otherwise impractical, follow your local environmental regulations during disposal. There are many excellent sources of information available online that outline these statutes, such as the National Electronics Recycling Infrastructure Clearinghouse.

When in doubt, a brief phone call to your local waste disposal company can quickly answer a lot of questions.

7. Keep Accounting in the Loop

Notify your accounting department of the sale or disposal of any hardware. This allows a given asset to be retired within the fixed-asset system, ensuring that your school or district isn't paying taxes for an item that no longer exists. Additionally, keeping up-to-date asset records prevents overrepresentation of resources in a given cost center, providing more accurate budgeting down the road.