Giving Your Aging Electronics a Proper (Legal) Send-Off

Tam Harbert -- Expert Business Source, 1/30/2007 6:30:00 AM

Walk around any business and you’re likely to find it: a storage closet, sometimes an entire back room, filled with old PCs, monitors, printers, fax machines and phones that have outlived their usefulness and are ready to be hauled away.

But think about this before reselling those electronics, taking them to the dump, or even giving them away: You could be breaking the law. A growing number of rules and regulations regarding hazardous waste, recycling and protecting private data may affect the way businesses can legally dispose of electronic equipment.

Electronics contain hazardous chemicals, including lead and mercury, that can leach and contaminate the ground as the products deteriorate. As awareness of the dangers grows, some states and municipalities have regulated the disposal of old electronics. At least four states – California, Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota – have banned TV and computer CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, which contain a high amount of lead, from landfills. The CRT bans generally carry fines for dumping monitors or TVs.

California, Maine, Maryland and Washington also require electronics recycling, and at least 20 other states are considering similar requirements. Some municipalities, including New York City, are considering their own local regulations.

Recycling laws for CRTs and other electronics follow one of two approaches. Some require the electronics manufacturer to take back and properly dispose of its old equipment – for a fee, of course. The other approach requires retailers to collect a surcharge from consumers for every electronics purchase. The fee goes to the state, which uses it to pay certified electronics recyclers. Retailers that fail to collect the fee are subject to fines. In some states, these laws can affect small business because they apply to manufacturers selling as few as 1,000 computer monitors or TVs a year.

Even if your state has no recycling laws, tossing old electronics out with the trash or donating them to charity could still put you in violation of national privacy and data protection laws, such as the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Under FACTA, for example, businesses are responsible for erasing electronic files that contain consumer information so that they cannot be recovered or reconstructed.

One way to avoid problems: hire a company to properly retire the equipment. That’s a growing business for Results Technology, a computer services company in Kansas City, Mo., that specializes in small and medium-sized businesses. For a fee ranging from $15 to $25 per power cord, the company removes old electronics from your office, erases all data from hard drives, then either repairs and resells the equipment (which reduces your fee) or disposes of it legally, says Treven Feleciano, manager of Results Technology’s asset disposition division. The company keeps a record of the equipments’ asset tags and serial numbers, providing a “death certificate” to prove the products were properly disposed of.

“A lot of companies are starting to realize that [proper disposal] is not only the right thing to do,” notes Feleciano. “It also saves them from liability.”

Tam Harbert is a freelance writer based in Rockville, Md.

Additional resources:

National Center for Electronics Recycling: General information on electronics recycling

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Recycling: Home page for the EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling, a consumer electronics campaign working to increase the number of electronic devices collected and safely recycled in the United States.

Computer TakeBack Campaign: Home page for a movement backed by a group of environmental organizations campaigning for electronics manufacturers to take responsibility for their products’ recycling or proper disposal.

International Association of Electronics Recyclers: Trade association of U.S. electronics recyclers