Part 1 of a 3-part series 

 “IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) is a means for the proper disposition, removal and recycling or remarketing of assets, while ensuring compliance to local and national data security and environmental regulations.”

This is a significant issue for companies of all sizes and in all industry verticals as it is not their core competency and is considered a sunk cost just to maintain compliance.  They are often left to create internal processes that tie to ITAD service partners and then staff to support those programs.   Companies are good at IT Asset Management (ITAM); managing acquisition cost, maintenance and uptime of their IT Assets.  They usually have solid data security policies and programs in place, even if it means removing hard drives prior to the asset leaving their possession.  And, they are aware of being environmentally and socially responsible.  These are all core to maintaining a sustainable business. ITAD becomes secondary and reactionary.

Having first learned of RoHS and WEEE as a member of a leading mobile phone supplier’s Global Environmental Team, it was apparent that legislation and responsibility placed on the OEMs for take back and tracking of eWaste was creating a large, yet highly fragmented, industry for ITAD.  It was equally clear that large OEMs were more concerned about brand image and the negative PR associated with their equipment ending up in landfills across the world, then they were with the cost to maintain take back programs and implementing 100% destruction and recycle policies.   It occurred to me that a properly maintained “reuse” program could help off-set some of those costs and have a larger impact on protecting the environment.

A colleague of mine  (now COO/Co-Founder of ServoTerra) had since moved on and ended up at a local California certified collector recycler of eWaste.  He had seen the industry and market potential and was brought there to take a local brick and mortar based collection facility into the board rooms of large OEMs and Contract Manufacturers to build a global reach including WEEE take back programs and remarketing of assets.  I joined him there to develop the back office processes and infrastructure to support an operation on that global scale.  This is where I learned the just how fragmented the offerings are in ITAD from Consignment, to Broker, to OEM Trade-in programs and the many challenges of linking those processes to downstream recycling and refining to include data security and certificates of destruction reporting. 

Stayed Tuned for PARTS 2 & 3 to include common weaknesses in todays ITAD processes and Recommended Best Practices.

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