Disposing of old equipment – How are you doing?

Disposing of old office equipment is always a challenge to ensure that it is properly “clean” before disposal. How do you do it?

When you think of all the office equipment which might have business or personal information on it, there’s a lot. Computers, laptops, servers, printers, mobile phones, memory drives etc. It’s not just the electronic equipment either. There’s also the need to ensure office furniture such a desks, filing cabinets etc are also empty. The ICO has fined organisations in the past for selling office furniture with files still in them!

Lots of small business owners struggle to dispose of old electronic equipment safely, so frequently they just hang on to it. There are lots of electronic device cleaning services. When selecting one to work with you, go for one which is going to provide you with a certificate of destruction. Make sure you ask what happens to the equipment once its clean. Many of these services will do it for no cost as well.

If you don’t want to go down that route, you could remove the hard drive and physically destroy it by breaking it up.

Let me know which method you use.