Equipment categories
MONITORS | BASE UNITS | PRINTERS & PLOTTERS | UPSs & BATTERIES
PERIPHERALS | COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT
Monitors, crt and flat screen
Monitors are deemed hazardous and thus covered by the requirements of premises coding and other documentary requirements.
There is little resale potential for crt monitors, with the exception of 17" units. Only these will be tested and, where Grade1, offered for sale into the second-user market.
Flat screen monitors will be tested, graded and priced for sale accordingly.
Rejected monitors are sent to a leading electronics waste recycler where segregation of products into appropriate waste streams takes place for onward processing.
The current position is that, for crt monitors, less than 1 percent by weight is not recyclable.
Base units and laptops
RGC is obligated, as a licencee of the Data Protection Agency, to protect data held on hard drives. The available methods of data destruction are covered elsewhere in this site, however the primary method is software shredding - the binary overwriting of data held on the drive.
RGC has facilities for the simultaneous shredding of drives in up to 100 units; additionally it can erase data on drives remote from the unit from which they were extracted.
RGC will, as requested, certify the successful shredding of drives, supporting this with detailed information presented by the software.
A base unit with a processor less than PIII/700 is unlikely to be placed into the second-user market. Units with less power than that are broken down in-house with two main waste streams, one consisting of light iron for local treatment and a second consisting of other separate components sent to a remote waste recycler.
Laptops generally have some value even if only for the extraction of spare parts; a local specialist company receives those not immediately available to the second-user market.
In all cases RGC is prepared to discuss the crediting of a percentage of the sale value to the customer
Printers, desktop and network; plotters
The majority of desktop printers have little or no sale value.
The larger, network units have a value either as operational printers or for spare parts. These are sold to specialist companies
Plotters also have a similar value and are treated in the same manner.
Printers with no resale value are sent to a leading electronics waste recycler where again segregation of products into appropriate waste streams takes place for onward processing. High levels of recycling are achieved and these are increased in the newer printer models by the identification of plastic type; this enables the recycler to offer clean, sorted plastics to the specialist plastic recycler, a requirement which is increasingly the criterion for sale to such specialists.
UPSs and batteries
Batteries are categorised as hazardous waste and, as such, their transportation is covered by Hazardous Waste legislation.
The predominant type of loose battery encountered is lead-acid and these are transported in accordance with current legislation, which broadly requires secure containers containing batteries of similar types grouped.
RGC's personnel are aware of their necessary response in the event of any incident involving battery transportation.
Batteries are collected and correctly stored at RGC's warehouse until an economic load is prepared. This is then transported to a local lead recycler who primarily reclaims the lead by smelting and refining prior to returning the material to Industry.
UPSs - Uninterruptible Power Supplies - frequently contain lead-acid batteries. Under safe conditions, RGC will extract these batteries from a UPS in its warehouse; otherwise it will be stored for onward transportation to its waste recycler.
Peripherals
This category includes keyboards, mice, cabling etc.
This equipment rarely has a commercial value except as a part of a computer system and here the technically superior equipment has a re-use potential.
Otherwise this equipment is sent to a leading electronics waste recycler.
Communication equipment
Communications equipment likely to be collected for disposal consists of networking equipment utilised to interconnect computers etc to permit the exchange of data.
Any value this may have is determined primarily by age.