Everyone should be as environmentally conscious with electronic devices as we are everyday with reducing consumption of energy resources and recycling plastics and metals. According to the EPA, less than 20% of cell phones are recycled. American landfills are quickly approaching their capacities in part because of the physical bulk and the cumulative hazardous effects of electronic devices.
Electronic devices include computer servers, desktops, laptops, PDAs, monitors, keyboards, printers, cell phones, cameras, televisions, pagers, stereos, VCRs, CD/DVD players, answering machines, fax machines and more.
There is not a reason each business and individual can’t contribute to preserving and protecting environmental resources. As an American business, before major electronic purchases, you can check the EPEAT registry for energy consumption levels and other environmental indicators. This is similar to checking the energy usage for home appliances before buying. The EPEAT uses the IEEE 1680 standard, the first US standard of environmental guidelines, for desktops, laptops and monitors. As American consumers before buying, we can check energy usage with the Energy Star 4.0 ratings at the Environmental Protection Agency.
You can find the nearest e-waste recycling center to your location from global links when discarding old electronic devices. In the USA, be cautious of the recycler who accepts e-waste without charge. They could be exporting the collected ewaste to third world countries. Major companies such as Apple, Dell, HP, Sony and others offer recycling services for a charge. They are working with local government-approved recyclers in different countries.
When you are surrendering electronic devices to a company for recycling, remember to either remove the hard drive and physically hammer it so the hard drive is irreversibly unusable, or use a product such as cyberCide so personal information is not available in case the hard drive isn’t immediately destroyed.
“Deleted” information is stored on the drive and is available with the proper retrieval tools unless it is written over or degaussed. To maintain a clean hard drive on computers you actively use on a daily basis, you need to be sure deleted information is no longer available. You can use drive cleaner software or the ‘secure empty trash’ feature with a Macintosh operating system. But, if there is any evidence (logs, deleted information) on your hard drive related to any legal proceedings don’t use these products because your evidence will be permanently unavailable.
You can find directions for permanently removing personal information from a cell phone before you donate, exchange, sell or recycle at Recellular. You do not want to give the next person in possession of the electronic device access to any information (credit, personal, financial, confidential) hidden in any location on the electronic device. Consumers can also use third-party recycling vendors such as PC Disposal.