The study by Computer Aid – the UK registered charity – found “ some shocking examples of bad practice” regarding landfills and a general lack of reuse, with just 20% of IT decision makers “not confident” that none of their company’s unwanted IT goes to landfill.
Researchers also found that just 14% of corporates follow best practice IT disposal and send their working IT for reuse, despite 83% respondents believing that their organisation complies with the WEEE directive.
The research – which polled 100 senior decision makers in the UK, working at businesses with 1,000 or more members of staff – found that PC turnover in the UK remains high, with respondents disposing of an average of 542 computers per year.
Typically, says the report, UK companies replace their base units every 3.7 years and their monitors every four years. In addition, despite the economic climate, one third of companies were found to replace their base units as often as every three years and one in five replace monitors during this time frame as well.
83% of senior IT decision makers said that their company is compliant with the WEEE Directive – the legislation aimed at reducing the volume of e-waste generated and the promotion of reuse, recycling and recovery of working equipment.
However, said Computer Aid, turning the figures on their head shows that 13% were not aware of the directive at all, something that the charity says is highly concerning.
And when it comes to disposal of computers, the report says that recycling IT equipment is the preferred option, with 28% of companies recycling all of their IT and 41% recycling more than half. Though this is encouraging, the charity said that the reuse of unwanted IT equipment is a much more environmentally friendly and socially responsible method of disposal than recycling – and it is also the preferred disposal method specified in the WEEE Directive.
Just 14% of firms, says the research, follow best practice in IT disposal and send all their working computers for reuse and recycle the rest. Among the remaining respondents, 63% cite data protection concerns as a reason for avoiding reuse. Cost is also a factor, with 53% stating that this influences their decision not to reuse, while 24% suggested that contractual obligations to a leasing company prevented them from doing so.
Commenting on the results, Anja Ffrench, Computer Aid's director of communications, said that the study highlights some shocking examples of bad practice in IT disposal among some of the UK’s largest companies.
“It is extremely worrying that many of the UK’s largest companies are not able to guarantee that their equipment is not illegally dumped in landfill. Companies must use disposal providers that can track exactly where all their equipment is sent to so as to avoid the devastating impact on health and the environment that e-waste can cause”, she said.
“Moreover, policies need to be put in place to ensure more reuse of working equipment. Disposing of PCs after four years is a huge waste of resources since most computers will last for at least double this time”, she added.
Ffrench went on to say that, since the vast majority of IT decision makers want to send PCs for reuse, she hopes that this research will encourage companies to improve their IT disposal procedures and look for decommissioning providers that guarantee environmentally friendly disposal of non-working equipment and best practice data security while also ensuring that working IT is reused.