If you’re like many business owners, you want to reduce your business’ carbon footprint.:
- recycle papers and plastics,
- go paperless,
- give staff time off to volunteer,
- use energy-efficient lighting and appliances,
- patronize local, sustainable businesses when you can, for catering, service work and resources, etc.
You realize that businesses produce most of the environmental waste in the world and can have a huge environmental impact, either good or bad.
Benefits of recycling hard drives
There’s no doubt that recycling hard drives is better for the environment than just throwing them away.
- Recycling prevents waste and air pollution,
- Recycling provides polycarbonate plastic and aluminum for reuse, and
- Recycled drives save manufacturers and consumers a lot of money as well
However, when it comes to hard drive destruction, you have to make sure you’re making the most secure choice before recycling.
Many Options
When you search online for hard drive recycling, you’ll see a lot of vendors. Though many of these companies offer a high-quality solution, the solutions aren’t all completely secure.
For example, many companies that specialize in recycling hard drives will purge the data to remove it from the drives. After the companies purge the hard drives, they recycle them. In addition, purging does offer some security.
- Both formatting and deletion leave information hidden somewhere on the drive that skilled hackers can access.
- Purging is more effective than formatting a drive or deleting a drive, because it overwrites the hard drive several times with blank files.
However, though purging is compliant with government agencies, and more effective than deleting and formatting, it doesn’t completely destroy the drive.
Many experts advise you to completely destroy the physical drive with a hard drive crusher, before you recycle the hard drive materials. This likely reduces the hard drives resale value from a recycling standpoint, but is a safer choice for a typical business’ secure data.
Companies and government agencies can pay hefty fees and fines when they don’t dispose of sensitive client information properly. Therefore, make sure to keep security in mind in your efforts to go green.
Contact us at Phiston Technologies today!. You will find our hard drive crushers and media destruction machines in offices all over the world. Find out why the world’s top corporations trust our products above all the others.
