Ways in Which Kids Can Help In Solving the Problem of E-Waste

 

Did you know that an average home has 24 electronic products? When you stop using your electronic products, they become electronic waste or e-waste. It is vital that this e-waste of yours does not end up in trash. Even small stuff like batteries and smartphones should not go in trash. E-waste is harmful to the environment and when you throw it in trash; you also end up throwing away the valuable metals present in it. This is why services of local electronic recycling and hard drive destruction are significant. They ensure that the e-waste is handled in the most reliable manner and the valuable substances present in them are recovered effectively.

    

What should you do with your old electronics? 

Give them away for reuse: At times, you have a thing that is still working but you do not use it anymore. The best thing to do here is to give that thing away to somebody who could use it. If you cannot find a friend or a family member who wants that electronic item, you can donate it to a charity.  

Recycle them: If you are not able to find someone who needs your electronic gadget, you can recycle it. Just like bottles or cans or newspapers from your house, electronic items can be recycled too. 

Where should you take your electronic waste for recycling?

There are companies that are happy to take your old electronics items, take them apart and recycle them for important materials like glass, metals and plastic. A lot of these materials can be utilized to make new products. 

Get in touch with a good e-waste recycler: When you are planning to recycle your old electronics, you should consider electronic recycling companies with an e-Stewards certification. E-stewards are recyclers who meet the best standards on how they recycle your stuff. They recycle electronic items in the best possible manner and do not ship them off to poor countries.  

Staples stores: If you are not able to find an e-Steward recycler near your place, you can take some of your electronics back to any Staples Store for the purpose of electronic recycling. Staples is equipped with a free recycling program that works with an e-Steward recycler. 

Best Buy stores: If you have certain big electronic items that Staples cannot take (eg. televisions), you can take these to any Best Buy Store. 

Kids can also learn to fix their broken electronic gadgets on their own or do a fundraiser or smartphone recycling drive in their school. This will also encourage other kids to take e-waste recycling seriously.

ITAD and Why Businesses Cannot Do Without It

 

The irresponsible dumping of IT assets and electronic waste has become a major concern across the globe. The growth in technology cannot be stopped and it is essential for the growth of economy. Thus, it is vital that we manage the ways in which we dispose of our e-waste. This is where ITAD companies and services of national electronic recycling come into the picture. Your obsolete IT assets were once utilized to store and transmit important information. If they are not disposed of in a proper manner with complete data erasure using data destruction processes, they present a security risk to the company. Thus, effective ITAD is crucial. 

Important elements of an ITAD program 

ITAD or IT asset disposition is the business that involves disposing of unwanted or obsolete IT equipment in an eco-friendly and safe manner. An effectively planned ITAD program follows the following four steps: 

Transportation and logistics: It is the process in which old and surplus electronic assets depending on their reusability are labeled and transported to the place of their destruction.

Refurbishing: Once the equipment is sorted depending on their usability, they can be reused and restored. They can also be resold at market prices.

Data destruction: Data destruction is the most important component and it ensures that the entire data is destroyed in a foolproof manner. The certificates of data destruction are important for audit purposes. 

Recycling & reporting: Recycling is the final part of ITAD. In case your equipment gets listed as ‘not-reusable’, it will be sent away for the purpose of recycling. While recycling, the equipment reusable elements and components are taken out and the rest is incinerated. 

Chief advantages of an ITAD program

Inventory management 

IT gadgets are pivotal to run a business and as we grow, technology grows too. This makes it necessary to get rid of old equipment and upgrade the systems. With the help of ITAD companies, you get yourselves rid of the crisis linked with getting rid of your old equipment in an efficient manner. 

Management of cost of logistics 

It is not possible to dispose of your obsolete IT equipment on your own. This is because you will have to handle the tasks of collecting, sorting, labeling, grouping, removing, refurbishing and recycling. This can lead to breaking, losing or missing your equipment. ITAD companies help you save time, money and stress. 

Ensure secure data disposal 

It is vital that data erasure is safe and verified and ITAD ensures that. When data is destroyed in an irresponsible manner, it results in data breach that harms the organization and its employees and clients. ITAD makes sure that your data is destroyed responsibly via data destruction and then it is sent for recycling or reselling. 

In compliance with the law

Responsible disposition of assets expects that you follow the multiple local/national, corporate and environmental laws and regulations. When a business fails to adhere to these laws, it results in breach of trust and huge penalty. This also causes embarrassment for the business. An ITAD company makes sure that your disposition is done in adherence to the set regulations and laws.

Utmost value recovery

Asset disposition is not only expenditure, but also asset recovery. This implies that you receive value or revenue by refurbishing or reselling your electronic waste. An ITAD program that is well-planned helps in recovering the maximum from your used IT and telecom equipment directly via costs linked with reselling and elements recovered during recycling and indirectly by saving you from any breaching compliance and penalty. 

Thus, ITAD is crucial for your organization and you need to take it seriously so that your business makes the most of its old and obsolete IT assets. 

Essential Methods of Disposing Your Electronic Waste

 

E-waste is made from deadly chemicals like cadmium, lead, beryllium and mercury. When gadgets are disposed of in an improper manner, the hazardous substances present in them end up contaminating the soil and air and also reach water bodies. In spite of having services of local electronic recycling and corporate electronic recycling, a lot of e-waste ends up being shipped overseas and gadgets get buried in pits. It is vital that people adopt eco-friendly waste disposal methods so that they can dispose of their e-waste locally. Here’s a look at the distinct ways of safely disposing electronic waste: 

Sell your outdated electronics 

The electronic you are no longer using can be easily sold. Online websites like eBay and Craigslist can help you get rid of your outdated electronics and you can also earn money. You can also have a garage sale for your old electronic products and sell them to people who really need them. A lot of electronic shops are forever ready to buy old electronics from people. 

Give the electronics back your electronic company 

A range of electronic companies offer an exchange policy to their customers whereby they take back the old gadget from the customers when they buy a new version of the gadget. Customers also receive a discount on their new purchase. Some recycling companies have also set up initiatives for electronic drop off. They have drop off points for products like tablets and mobile phones. You can get in touch with local electronics shop to gain information concerning drop off locations.  

Give your e-waste to certified e-waste recycler

E-waste recycling equips you with good options of local electronic recycling. You need to get in touch with an e-waste recycler that is officially certified by the Basel Action Network (BAN). Basel Action Network is a non-profit organization of recycling companies that are dedicated to recycle electronic waste in a responsible and safe manner. All members are required to make a pledge and demonstrate their Pledges of Responsible Recycling. Thus, working with a certified recycler implies that you do not have to worry about risking losing your personal details to criminals or polluting another nation via export of e-waste. 

Go to civic Institutions

Enquire amongst your universities, schools and government for any programs of recycling they are running as a range of organizations have started assigning a particular place and day for citizens who are environmentally conscious to come and drop off their electronic waste. 

What Makes E-Waste Recycling Indispensable?

 

The electronic devices are increasingly becoming cheaper these days. The rising growth in the electronics industry has resulted in the massive issue of end-of-life (EOL) electronics or electronic waste. With the growing quantity of electronic waste, the need for electronic recycling programs has also grown. Let’s get an insight into e-waste and the significance of electronic recycling: 

E-waste

The end-of-life electronic devices known as e-scrap or e-waste include items like televisions, stereos, mobile phones and computer equipment. These things can often be recycled or refurbished but a good amount ends up in landfills. It has been estimated that only 20 percent of the global electronic waste is recycled and the rest 80 percent ends up in landfills.

Ways in which consumers can recycle their old electronics

People get access to opportunities of recycling depending on the location where they reside. The best option to deal with electronic waste is to donate your old electronic equipment that can be recycled or reused as is. Make sure that your personal information is wiped from the electronic devices before you donate them. Other opportunities of local electronic recycling include authorized electronics recycler locations, retailer take back programs or electronics recycling events. 

Can you throw e-waste in trash?

Your location and equipment decides whether you can throw your electronic waste in trash. Consider your specific state legislation but it’s advisable to recycle. Know that certain cities or communities have policies in place that ban electronic waste even when there is no such ban at the state level. Make sure to use the services of recyclers who are certified via either of the voluntary certification programs that have been established to guarantee responsible recycling. 

Importance of electronic recycling 

Rich raw materials source: Electronic waste is a rich source of raw materials internationally and only ten to fifteen percent of the gold in electronic waste is recovered successfully while the rest is lost. E-waste contains deposits of precious metals that are estimated to be between forty and fifty times richer than ores that are mined from the earth’s surface. 

Toxic materials: Since old electronic devices comprise toxic substances like mercury, lead, chromium and cadmium, adequate processing is pivotal to make sure that these materials do not get released into the environment. They might also contain other toxic chemical flame retardants and heavy chemicals.

    

International movement of harmful waste: The uncontrolled movement of electronic waste to countries where inexpensive labor and primal approaches to recycling have lead to health risks to residents that are exposed to the release of toxins. 

Advantages of Destroying Data In-House

 

Data deleted from hard drives and hard disks can be easily recovered via special software and other methods. Adequate destruction of hardware has become a crucial need among businesses. Any kind of storage media that is left undestroyed can make a company vulnerable to data thefts. The range of devices utilized in modern enterprises makes a proper data destruction process vital. Organizations that need to control their data and make sure that it gets destroyed can get an advantage from keeping their processes in-house. Here’s a look at the reasons to consider in-house data destruction:  

Control over the distinct steps of the process

It is vital to keep track of the sensitive data that is controlled by the government or the industry regulations. Organizations are required to document what they have done and what is needed to protect data at all times. This can be risky when companies need to manually record the location of decommissioned hard disks, track hard disk drives during shipment to a 3rd party specialist, monitor the disks before shipping them and confirm that the storage media has been effectively destroyed. When data destruction is done in-house, documentation becomes easier by removing any 3rd party stakeholders and problems of visibility that occur by depending on an outsider are eliminated.   

Guarantee of destruction

There are multiple methods accessible to erase data but not all function equally well. Physical destruction of data can be troublesome in case a disk does not get properly shredded. Physical access to important parts of a disk can make data accessible to expert hackers. Magnetic data wipes done by a hard disk degausser are capable of destroying all the information on the hard disk, making the data completely unrecoverable. Inadequate technologies and human error can happen if companies are not completely aware about whom they partner with. One method to save yourself from this risk is to keep the destruction process in-house. 

Control over operational expenditures

The long-term expenditures of paying for a service can add up to more than a company would spend on hardware-based solutions. Degaussers can allow an organization to recover the primary cost of purchase by saving on service subscriptions. Security and control combine with the long-term cost benefits to create effective return on investment for organizations that run through a good number of hard disks.

A Quick Guide to Important Data Destruction Methods

 

When it comes to hard drive destruction or data destruction, there is not a large variety of methods and the thing that is common with all approaches is the requirement to dispose of them in a secure manner. Merely throwing away the old items is not sufficient. Without the adequate disposal of items, businesses run the risk of exposing client information, information insurance, and security arrangements. 

Here’s a look at the distinct types of data destruction methods that are available for your business:

Overwriting

In case you have data that remains on disks and storage media even after you have tried to erase it, then the most commonly used method to get rid of it is via overwriting the media with new data. The process is also called sanitization or data wiping. When the data is overwritten in such a manner, a pattern of 0s and 1s is written over the original information. At times, a random pattern is made use if and this makes for later verification that the drive has been wiped completely.

As overwriting hard drive data is made possible by software and is used selectively on all or part of a storage medium, it is a simple option for certain applications. Ensuring that all information is addressed, one pass is generally sufficient to remove all the data. Nevertheless, at times, high-security applications might need multiple wipes and this provides an added measure that ensures that the old data is destroyed. Overwriting is a cost-effective and eco-friendly option of data destruction.

Physical destruction

This method sounds like the most effective data destruction method and businesses can physically destroy data in a range of ways like melting, shredding, pulverizing, etc. The methods ensure that the hard drive becomes completely inoperable after the destruction. Physical destruction needs to be carried out with the help of high-powered equipment only. With the developments in technology, it has become possible to retrieve data even from damaged hard drives. When a process of data wiping is utilized prior to physically destroying the disk, it makes sure that the data is thoroughly destroyed. Reliable ITAD companies take upon themselves the task of effectively destroying data from the electronic equipment before disposing of it.

Degaussing

This method of data destruction makes use of a high-powered magnet to disturb the magnetic field of floppy disks, magnetic tapes, or hard disks. Once this is done, the data gets destroyed as part of the process. This is done by making use of a degausser. Degaussing ensures that data becomes completely unrecoverable in a less amount of time and this makes the process ideal for dealing with data that is highly sensitive. It decreases the labor resources and time required to overwrite information. The process of degaussing prevents the recovery of any company information by data recovery software or services, thereby strengthening the data security of your company from any outside threats. Degaussing diminishes the risks that are concerned with potentially damaging financial data, emails and proprietary information thereby uprooting the risks of compromising any information being exposed.

 

It’s Time to Handle The Quickest Increasing Stream of Waste

 

E-waste is one of the quickest developing waste streams on the planet. Every year, new customer gadgets and corporate hardware are getting utilized, and the old ones are getting disposed of. Over 90% of ewaste is dumped wrongfully, which is a significant issue. There is a rising interest in electronic recycling suppliers that can appropriately deal with that ewaste.

While a great many people discard their old contraptions such as hard drives, screen, keyboards, phones, laptops etc. which advance toward the landfills, that ewaste is taking up a significant a normal asset which could have been utilized for different purposes.

The IT hardware that you believe is a waste is valuable from various perspectives. Do you realize that there's gold, copper, silver and different components present in a large number of the IT hardware. The electronic reusing suppliers adhering to the public electronic reusing rules and guidelines appropriately treat every equipment thing to extricate the pivotal metals from these gadgets.

Along these lines, tossing them in the landfills aren't useful for anybody. As opposed to discarding them, one ought to all in all send them to the electronic reusing suppliers with the goal that those organizations can treat the ewaste the correct way, for example, the hard drive destruction should be carried by the professional recyclers only. These organizations classified the gadgets dependent on their sorts and class. In any case, make certain to contact just the authorized reusing specialist co-ops as such organizations will reuse the ewaste adhering to the standards and guidelines and spare nature from getting contaminated due to ewaste.

Information deleting is additionally another alternative for the organizations who would prefer not to go for equipment destruction. The pivotal information is eradicated from the capacity gadgets to prevent their information from getting into inappropriate hands.