IT Managers, What's In Your Dumpster?

Never mind what's in your wallet. What's in your Dumpster? If you're among the 15% of IT managers interviewed by Osterman Research, electronic waste is sitting there.Depending on your state's laws, that may or may not be illegal. And depending on what you're dumping, whether old CRTs or hard-disk drives, it may or may not be a security threat. What we can surmise from the report is that it was all done intentionally: 100% of respondents answered, "yes," when asked: "Are you knowledgeable about your organization's e-waste policies and practices? By 'e-waste,' we mean end-of-life IT assets such as computers, servers and other equipment that is no longer required." The report, 2009 Converge IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) Trends Report, was conducted by Osterman for Converge of Peabody, Mass.

Among those that do recycle their electronic waste, IT managers are more concerned about data leakage than, say, industrial solvent leakage: 41.8% said they were motivated to recycle by a "concern about data security breaches from IT assets released from our organization." Just over 25% had green motives.

That attitude might change in Wisconsin if Wisconsin State Sen. Mark Miller has his way. Miller re-introduced Senate Bill 107, based off a similar law in Minnesota, on Tuesday requiring consumer electronics manufacturers to take them off consumers' hands to ensure they will be recycled instead of shoved in a landfill. Miller has sponsored similar e-waste legislation every year since 2005; it has consistently failed.

Of course, saving a computer or television from the municipal landfill isn't a guarantee that it won't later be taking the Big Dirt Nap. As we have seen, recycled TVs and PCs often end up in landfills in poor countries, under suspect circumstances -- for example, their components were intentionally mislabeled as nontoxic or they were shipped off as "used" and intended for resale when, in fact, they were going to the scrap heap. A just-released European Union report, Waste without borders in the EU? Transboundary shipments of waste, outlines the problem in EU states.