Product recycling

A commitment to the long term

We actively support recycling in every part of our operation – by involving ourselves in the research and development of new recycling methods and by offering one of the most comprehensive take-back and recycling services for end-of-life IT equipment.

This is supported by our network of recycling partners, all of whom have been extensively environmentally audited to ensure they reach our standards. As a result, we can offer customers a range of recycling and asset management services, including recycling for spares recovery; refurbishment for staff sales and charitable donations; re-use by our customers elsewhere in the business; sale into the second-user market; purchasing and sale of second user equipment into corporate markets; and disassembly and recycling to high environmental standards.

In all, nearly 190,000 items were handled by our IT recycling team during 2006/07. Fourteen per cent of the items were refurbished and returned to customers, 35 per cent were sold on and 51 per cent were sent for further recycling by our downstream business partners.

Equipment marked for resale is stored and offered to brokers, who then come and collect it from the site. Different brokers specialise in different kinds of equipment and different markets, but we audit them all before accepting them as buyers.

Our duty of care extends to every partner involved in the chain. For example, items marked for ‘disposal’ are sent to our chosen specialist recycling partner. Here batteries and other hazardous materials from circuit boards and casings are removed before metal casings and fittings are extracted and sent for melting down.

The leftovers from these processes are then transported to a smelting plant run by Xstrata in Quebec, Canada, which is one of the world's largest precious metals extracting and processing plants. As a result, we can boast a genuine cradle to grave recycling service. We aren’t resting on our laurels, however. Recycling is still a relatively new business and we’re only just beginning to get to grips with what the disposal chain looks like.

In our experience, responsible recycling is neither common nor intuitive, making unlicensed disposal services superficially attractive.

In our view, though, the pace of change in the industry, in the minds of customers and in government means that the rogue elements in the industry will be driven out soon and more responsible methods will prevail.

PDF Read the product recycling Case Study. [460kb]