Protect the information. Then recycle the hardware.
Retired laptops, drives and servers rarely leave a business empty. We treat the data on a device as a separate problem from the device itself, and deal with it before anything is dismantled.
The device stops being useful long before the data does.
A drive that has been wiped, reformatted or simply switched off can still hold readable information. Anything that leaves a building with storage in it is a decision about data before it is a decision about waste.
So the storage is dealt with first, and separately — and only then does the hardware become an e-waste question.
More things hold data than you would list from memory.
How a data-bearing consignment moves.
Five stages, kept deliberately plain. What happens at each one is agreed with you before a collection is booked.
Most of the risk sits in the retirements nobody planned for.
Equipment rarely leaves one machine at a time. It leaves as an office refit, a fleet refresh, a decommissioned rack — and that is where storage gets missed.
Once the media is destroyed the device stops being a data question and becomes a material one. What happens to the hardware
- Retirements happen in batches, so a single overlooked device travels out with everything else.
- Storage turns up outside the obvious machines — the wall above is not a complete list.
- How a device is handled should be a decision taken in advance, not a default applied on arrival.
Retiring equipment that holds data?
Tell us what you have and where it is. We will talk through how the data-bearing items should be handled before anything is collected.