Computer Aid has been working with independent research company Vanson Bourne to establish current IT decommissioning practices in the UK’s largest companies and we found that:
• 39 per cent of UK’s largest companies do not data wipe all their unwanted PCs
• One-third have decommissioned computers containing data which are unaccounted for
• 1 in 5 senior IT decision makers in the UK are “not confident” that zero per cent of their company’s unwanted IT goes to landfill
• Only 14 per cent follow best practice IT disposal and send their working IT for reuse
These statistics are shocking, particularly when one thinks of the scale of this problem. Each of the 100 companies surveyed are among the largest in the UK with half of the respondents employed in organisations with over 1,000 staff and the other half with over 3,000. Moreover, each company decommissions just under 550 PCs each per year.
Computer Aid International blog 