Guidance for the Disposal of Computing Equipment

[Much of the following is based on an example of best practice from Oxford University.]

The policy for disposal of equipment that is surplus to the requirements of the unit that originally purchased it is as follows:

1. Reasonable efforts should be made to see if any other unit is able to make use of the equipment.
2. Equipment that has residual value may be sold, either to Birkbeck members or outside bodies, subject to the College's financial guidelines.
3. Where equipment has limited resale value, consideration should be given to whether it can be donated to any charitable or community project.
4. If the equipment cannot be reused, then it should be recycled or disposed of in an environmentally-friendly manner. Monitors cannot go for landfill and other items may require to have environmentally hazardous components removed first.

Importance of Data removal

An overriding consideration in any move of equipment must be to ensure that any College data on the machine, and any software licensed to the College is removed. It is, of course, vital to satisfy the requirements of the Data Protection Act, but it must also be understood that any College data that is discovered by a later owner may cause controversy, adverse publicity, etc.

Ensuring adequate destruction of data is the responsibility of the unit that owns the equipment, and must not be delegated to any person outside the College without adequate contractual obligations being imposed.

Deleting Data- technical aspects

Before disposing of any computer system, it is vital to remove all traces of data files. Merely deleting the visible files is not sufficient to achieve this, since data recovery software could be used by a new owner to "undelete" such files. The disk-space previously used by deleted files needs to be overwritten with new, meaningless data - either some fixed pattern (e.g. binary zeroes) or random data. Similarly, reformatting the whole hard disk may not in itself prevent the recovery of old data as it is possible for disks to be "unformatted".

The most well-known tool for fully wiping old data files is the "Wipe Info" module of the Norton Utilities suite for PC and Macintosh systems. This will completely wipe the contents of any specified files, or the whole of the free space on the disk. However, this approach still assumes that you have located every file that needs to be taken care of, which may not always be easy.

A better approach is to reformat the hard disk, installing a clean copy of the original operating system, and then run Wipe Info on the free space. This should leave a machine in a suitable state for disposal.

Older versions of Norton Utilities included a utility called "WipeDisk" which could fully wipe the entire hard disk on a PC booted-up from a floppy disk. Other utilities of this type are available such as Sanitizer.

Virtually every PC is bought with a licence for the operating system supplied with it. A machine can therefore be legitimately disposed of with a freshly installed copy of the same system. However, you should not install a later copy of the system software.

Outside Bodies dealing with Computer Disposal

• Computer Aid International are a multinational charity who provide top-grade recycled computer equipment for reuse in education, health and not-for-profit organisations in developing countries. They therefore have restrictions on what sort of computers they will accept for passing on, effectively anything above a Pentium 3. Lesser computers will be disposed of according to their environmental policy.
• PC Disposals: PC Disposals will take small or large quantities of computer equipment for environmentally-friendly disposal.
• Williams Environmental. As well as hazardous waste disposal, they also recycle electrical and electronic equipment.
• Maxitech. Maxitech pride their IT Recyling as being ethical, secure and legal.
• EOL IT Services pride themselves as being sustainable, secure and socially responsible.

Please note: obsolete computer equipment may have little or no residual financial value - but may still hold valuable information and/ or software. Pending removal of data, care should be taken to ensure secure storage of equipment and control of access.In all cases, details of the transfer or disposal of the equipment must be recorded. This should be done in the appropriate Equipment Database or Asset Register, maintained by the school/dept to which the equipment belongs. These details should include: reason for transfer/disposal, to whom ownership has been transferred/sold or to whom equipment has been passed for disposal, and the date of transfer/disposal.

What do you need to do if you do want to give equipment away to not for profit groups?

There is legislation regarding the disposal of second hand electrical equipment and it is essential that you get any items PAT tested [PAT stands for portable application testing], the cables checked, and you give a test certificate to the organization taking the items.

Waste Electronic & Electrical Equipment Regulations (WEEE)

In order to meet this legislation it is the responsibility of all Schools/Units to follow the procedures outlined in this Environment Agency document.