And now, the end is near... The pride and joy of your original operation is now four years old. Technology has overtaken it, and it has been reduced to a printing role. When you look back to 1997, the Pentium processor was really in its infancy, with the P133 being a really powerful beast. Many companies disposed of their PC's that were P166 or below in the massive purge that was the Year 2000 upgrade. But many companies still reused these slower PC's to do less important tasks such as Internet gateways or print servers. But now, even these services can come in a box, ready to go as soon as you put it on the LAN. Signing the Death Warrant. Your MD asks you to do an audit of all the systems in the company. You already know what you have and where it all is, because you read the previous article and set up an asset tracking system. When you do a search on the database to see what pre-PII processor powered systems you have, it shows up just a handful. The MD sees the report and then signs the form that instructs you to dispose of these systems. Effectively signing the death warrant of the unit. Death Row. The first thing you have to do is make sure the system can be replaced with either another PC or a black box solution. If it can, the PC will then presumably find its way to a staging post in the form of a large store room, or even in the corner of the IT support office. Strippers. Occasionally, the older PC's have some useful parts that can be re-used, such as RAM and power supplies. Sometimes, there is a requirement to have a small hard drive added to someone's PC, and these units can be a good source. Open up the PC and have a look to see if there are any other bits and pieces that either the business or individuals could use. I have had instances where someone in the office has wanted a P75 processor for testing. Keeping these small parts can prove useful by improving the service to individuals as well as the business. Send me a Card. Some of the older PC's have separate video, sound, and LAN cards. Even though 9 times out of 10 the cards are the older ISA standards, they can still be used as spare parts for testing. If you have a test laboratory that has a large number of PC's that you wish to test your product on, then don't forget to allow for users with much lower specification PC's. This includes the older multimedia cards. You're Just an Empty Shell. The PC has been opened up, and stripped of its vital parts. You are now left with basically a PC cabinet and a motherboard. You might not want to keep these, so it is now time to speak of disposing of the various parts. Cabinet. This is possibly the easiest to dispose of. As most of it is metal, you might get a few pence for it at the local scrap metal merchants. But you will have to collect a large enough number to make it worth while getting some money back for it. On the other hand, they don't usually turn any scrap away, so you know it will be dealt with and usually reprocessed for some other use. Plastic. Cabinets will have a number of plastic extrusions on them, such as front panels, feet, and other parts. These have to be disposed of safely. Contact your local council office and they should be able to process the plastic for you. Motherboard. Now comes the tricky bit. Motherboards are full of poisonous chemicals (mercury, lead, arsenic, etc) and need to be disposed of in an environmentally way. Again, contact your local council office for details of safe disposal. Don't Tip Me What ever you, do not dump any IT hardware down the local landfill. Monitors are especially dangerous, as no only do the boards have poisons in them, the tubes can break with terrible consequences. These tubes contain a vacuum that causes the tube to first implode, and then explode, throwing glass everywhere. Then there is the phosphorous powder in the front of the tube that makes it work. This it self is very poisonous. The other problem with any electronic hardware is that the poisons take a very long time to break down, and can take up to 100 years. Take IT Away. By far the best way of disposing of all electronic hardware is have someone do it for you. Your local council should be the first point of contact. However, if you live in a town like mine that does not believe in recycling (you cant even get cardboard recycled) then the private sector is your only hope. There are a number of private companies around that will take your hardware off you. Some will charge for this service, but then it is only usually a couple of pounds per PC or monitor. If any of the kit is reusable, then they will pay you for it. It might only be a couple of pounds for a PC, but it will all go towards the cost of the office Christmas party. Forget me not. If you do decide to put your old PC's into the hands of a third party, either obtain a certificate saying that the hard drive has been wiped securely, or better still (if the PC is not going to be reused) take the hard drive out and give it a whack with a large hammer to smash it beyond use. Dont forget that even though you have deleted the file, and emptied the recycle bin, the file is still on the disk. It doesn't take much to recover documents that could reveal the secrets of your company. This method of undeleting files is used by the police to obtain evidence of pornographic image dealers, so the process works and the results are every bit as good as the original document. The third party must sign a declaration that the units will be disposed of correctly, and not dumped in the nearest layby. If the local council find these units, they can be traced back (though it takes a while) the vendors by the units serial number, and you could end up in court for littering. The declaration must accompany the full list of all items, detailing the make, model, and serial number so you can be fully covered in the event of any claim. Execution Day The day comes when all the old hardware is to be collected and taken away. All the gonks that have adorned the monitor have been pulled off, plugs removed, data wiped from the hard drive. Put the kit somewhere where it is easy to load onto a truck, rather than have it scattered all across the office. I always feel a little sad seeing this stuff disposed of. When you consider all the hard work it has taken to keep the thing running, the systems that have been created, the documents that have drawn up making the expanding company what it is today. All now unimportant as the truck arrives and the PC is thrown unceremoniously into the back of the truck. And Finally.... Once you have removed the system from the building, remove it from your asset tracking system. Don't forget to inform the finance department about the disposal so they can take it off the balance sheet for the company accounts. Disposal of your hardware is very important in this age of being green. Whatever practice you put in place for your business, practice it at home. Television sets and video recorders have the same chemicals in them as your business PC, so they will need disposing of in the same way.

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