It’s important to monitor your company’s IT assets from cradle to grave, ensuring your business and client’s data is securely removed and destroyed. Read on to learn more.

Why is E-waste Recycling important for New Zealand businesses?

Regardless of industry or size, modern day companies rely on data to drive business. But when the IT assets hosting this data are up for retirement, it brings up the question of the best way to erase or destroy this precious information. IT asset decommissioning isn’t as simple as it used to be – with increasing cyber security threats and the concern of data loss, combined with environmental requirements – businesses need tore-look at their IT equipment disposal methods. 

It’s important to monitor your company’s IT assets from cradle to grave, ensuring your business and client’s data is securely removed and destroyed. Secure data destruction is complex, labour intensive and specialised. Following best practices, and engaging in a professional data destruction service, is essential, and ensures your business is not left vulnerable to data security threats or breaches. 

New Zealand e-waste facts

It’s estimated Kiwis produce more than 20kgs of e-waste per person per year, one of the highest rates in the world. This ranges from personal tech to work-based IT equipment such as out of date PCs, hard drives, and servers to monitors and keyboards. Of the 80,000 tonnes of e-waste produced in Aotearoa each year, a mere 2% of this is recycled. Electronic and computer equipment can contain toxic or hazardous materials such as mercury, lead, and cadmium. When not handled properly, this e-waste ends up polluting New Zealand's landfills, leaching hazardous materials into the earth and surrounding waterways. 

Overseas, many governments and corporations have enforced and adopted product steward ship programmes; working towards a circular economy to reduce waste heading to landfill. Unfortunately, New Zealand is the only country in the OECD without a formalised e-waste disposal framework, and it is up to individuals and businesses to seek out and engage in business e-waste recycling solutions including responsible IT equipment disposal and recycling. Not only is improper IT equipment disposal harmful to the environment, it also makes your company’s data susceptible to being inappropriately accessed or breached. Commerciale-waste recycling is a key step in ensuring your businesses e-waste – as well as your secure data - is taken care of. 

What can be recycled?

Do you have items lying around the office, unused on desks or forgotten about in in storage that could be recycled? This could include:

• Monitors,
• Hard drives,
• Laptops,
• PCs,
• Servers,
• POS equipment,
• Mice or
• Keyboards.

There are a myriad of benefits to proper IT equipment disposal for your company. It clears up important space, both in storage and on desks, it is better for the environment, and it helps your company work towards creating less impact on the environment. 

What are the steps to get started?

Step 1: Back Up & Delete - Protect Your Sensitive Data 

The first step in disposing of your organisation’s IT equipment is for enterprises to back up and secure confidential business documents, customer records and company information. Utilising a cloud-based backup service is an efficient and secure way to ensure your data is retained and safely stored. 

From there, it’s important to engage with a company who provides both asset recovery &recycling services alongside data destruction services. Partnering with a commercial e-waste recycling company, such as Computer Recycling, who uses certified data destruction software is the first step in ensuring your business’s data doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. 

Computer Recycling is one of the few data destruction companies in Auckland using world-leading Blancco HDD software to ensure all data is securely erased of fall equipment as part of the IT decommissioning process.  This gives your organisation peace of mind to know none of your company’s data can be accessed moving forward. Physical destruction can take place to ensure data is irretrievable, this includes hand dissembling and/or shredding the item. 

Step 2: Dispose - Donate, Remarket or Recycle

This leads into the next step in responsible disposal – donation, remarketing or recycling. Once your business and recycling partner have properly removed all data from IT assets, the equipment can be refurbished and repaired for retail, or dismantled and recycled. Working with a commercia le-waste recycler gives your business the opportunity to engage in bulk IT asset remarketing – meaning your equipment could be refurbished and resold, capturing the value of the products and benefiting your business’s bottom line. At Computer Recycling a portion of equipment that is processed by our refurbishment team is donated to not-for-profit community groups that work to provide tech items to teenagers, helping to reduce Aotearoa’s digital divide. 

Items that aren’t categorised for re-use will be processed for recycling. These items are dismantled, separated and graded. All e-scrap captured by Computer Recycling is exported under Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permits to facilities in Asia and Europe to be returned into base elements and used again. 

Business E-waste Recycling Solutions

Is your business looking to dispose of its IT equipment, and wants to reduce the risk of a sensitive data leak?

At Computer Recycling we provide end-to-end business e-waste recycling solutions for SMEs to large corporations ,community, education & government departments. We take confidential data destruction and decommissioning very seriously, and our refurbishment, re-purposing and recycling programmes ensure your company’s sensitive business information is protected and destroyed. 

E-waste Collection & Drop Off in Auckland

We also provide both pick-up and drop-off e-waste services to ensure smooth and efficient collection and auditing. Reach out to us today to find out how we can help you.

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