Why is a lot easier to answer! The Seventh Principal of the Data Protection Act states that you MUST employ a data destruction service to destroy redundant confidential information that can be either in paper or electronic format. This means that destroying them yourselves is not allowed.

The information Commissioners Office (ICO) has raised its fine from £5000 to £500,000 for breach of this rule or loss of confidential data.

So this comes back to: when must you destroy your data? The Act states that you must keep it for no longer than necessary. Nice and clear heh?

Here is a quick guide from what we have been able to establish, however it is a guide and we would suggest you get professional advice if at all concerned:

1. Tax records: Six years after the current tax year
2. Employment records: Seven years after the employee has left
3. Banking: Six years
4. Contracts/leases: Indefinitely
5. Old suppliers records: Six years

So to summarise: Any data held by your company must be destroyed by a third party company with proof of such and you must not keep it for any longer than necessary.

The containers, 89 of which were from England and 24 from the Netherlands, arrived in five shipments between late December and January from ports in Felixstowe, England, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

The Environment Ministry’s deputy director for hazardous and toxic waste management Masnellyarti Hilman has said that every year developed countries look to send their waste to Indonesia.

“Due to our lack of awareness, they sometimes send the waste illegally and others have falsely claimed that the waste was basic materials,” she said.

She said the flow of such waste into Indonesia had shortened the life spans of landfills in the country and caused health problems among scavengers.

She added that the ministry was cooperating with the Trade Ministry to draft a regulation on Secondhand Workable Electronic Stuff to prevent the flow of e-waste into Indonesia.

Based on Environment Ministry data dated 2006, Indonesia had 80 large and 150 small-and medium-sized electronics producers, most of them in Java, North Sumatra and Batam.

Many spare parts are imported, which opens loopholes for illegal imports of e-waste, but there is no exact data on the amount of illegal e-waste entering Indonesia.

This does not taken into account the fact that Indonesia has hundreds of sea ports, which adds to the problems of monitoring the illegal import of e-waste.

BP, Rio Tinto and Dow Chemical Company, who have paid tens of millions of pounds to become Olympic sponsors, collectively face allegations of causing environmental degradation, damaging public health and failing to clean up their pollution.

The companies, who are respectively providing fuel for the Olympic fleet, metal for medals and an ornate stadium wrap, will be criticised by a coalition of international grassroots organisations as part of their ‘Greenwash Gold 2012’ campaign in London.

All three companies maintain they are socially and environmentally responsible, and invest millions in clean technologies and community programmes.

Rio Tinto said it is providing the eight tonnes of metal for 4,700 gold, silver and bronze medals from its mines in Utah and Mongolia. The company is accused of threatening the existence of nomadic indigenous people in Mongolia who are being displaced by the operation. The Oyu Tolgoi mine in the South Gobi desert is already placing significant strain on scarce water resources, warned the London Mining Network.

BP has a prominent role in the Olympics, providing the fuel for 5,000 vehicles in the Olympic fleet, sponsoring teams and the Shakespeare festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

BP’s controversial venture in Alberta, Canada is regarded by campaigners as evidence that the company’s environmental claims do not stand up. The extraction and processing of tar sands in order to make oil is carbon intensive, polluting and damaging to the eco system, whichever technology is used, they say.

Dow is sponsoring the £14m Olympic stadium wrap. It also has contracts to provide the artificial grass for hockey pitches and roof insulation for some stadiums and accommodation in the Olympic village.

Campaigners say Dow’s failure to make Union Carbide Corporation, its wholly owned subsidiary since 2001, appear before the Indian criminal court to face outstanding charges related to the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, and its refusal to pay a share of the clean-up of contaminated water and land, make it an unsuitable Olympic partner.

So is it rather ironic that we are awarding athletic excellence using metals mined from a community where allegedly children’s lungs are being damaged by toxins produced by the mining?

WEEE from commercial or industrial sources can currently be classified as WEEE from private households providing it is of a similar nature and quantity. On 14 April 2012 the Agency issued guidance with regards to classification in response to concerns that large amounts of business-to-business WEEE were being documented as business-to-consumer WEEE.

The guidelines make it clear that a business disposing of more electrical or electronic items than an ordinary household would, or more frequently, won’t be able to justify classing this as business-to-consumer WEEE. They have also stated that it is unacceptable for businesses to get rid of their WEEE in small batches as a way around this.

The Agency is going to monitor the levels of business-to-consumer evidence created and WEEE recyclers will be responsible for providing an audit trail justifying the classification of business-to-business WEEE as that of business-to-consumer.

If you’re concerned that this will affect your business, then it is more important than ever to make use of a reputable computer and electronics recycling company to meet your WEEE obligations.

Choosing a reputable computer recycling company
When choosing a company to deal with your computer and other electronic and electrical equipment recycling, you should take the following into account:

• It is essential that they strictly follow the WEEE directives which require them to employ recycling methods that won’t harm the environment.
• Ensure that they are fully licensed by the Environmental Agency and insured to deal with your type of WEEE.
• They should maximise the recovery of computer components that are still usable and then recycle the rest.
• Check whether they hold the relevant ISO standard and whether their environmental policy conforms.
• A good IT recycling company will also offer effective data destruction services to ensure that no sensitive information gets into the wrong hands.
• They need to provide you with a Waste Transfer Note so that you can prove that you have fulfilled your own obligations if required.
• Confirm exactly what the charges are and look for clear pricing structures.

As a business in the UK you have an obligation under the WEEE directive to ensure that the company you use is properly licensed and to get a Waste Transfer Note when they take responsibility for your waste.

There are companies out there who will offer to deal with your electronic waste or recycle your computers very cheaply but chances are that they are not licensed to deal with hazardous waste. It is illegal to use these companies and can not only result in heavy fines but can also lead to imprisonment. It really isn’t worth taking the chance in order to cut costs.

You can read more about our company’s computer and electronic waste recycling services on our website or give us a call to find out how we can help you ensure you meet your legal obligations with regard to WEEE.

Weee connect, a Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) industry partnership, has funded its own TV advertising campaign, due to run more than 800 times on a series of Sky channels in the four weeks from Boxing Day, reaching an estimated 34 million viewers nationwide.

Organisers of the £56,000 campaign, thought be the first of its kind in Europe, are calling on local authorities to support the initiative with local campaigns to increase awareness of recycling electronics.

The campaign is focused on household items, as many of these are discarded when new versions are received as Christmas gifts. But the WEEE regulations apply equally to ICT and telecommunications equipment used by councils themselves.

One local authority which is joining in the campaign is Medway council in Kent, which is running a schools promotion to link up with the TV campaign. A ‘WEEE amnesty day’ is also planned for January, when visitors to a local shopping centre will be able to dispose of items in a large pink skip.

Under the UK’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment) Regulations 2009, which came into force on 1 January 2010 to implement new EU rules, the UK has committed to electrical and electronics recycling targets of 70% of small household appliances; 75% of IT and telecoms equipment; and 80% of large household appliances by 2016. Last year, the overall WEEE collection rate for households was just 38.4%.

While there have been government-run campaigns to boost WEEE awareness, the new industry-led initiative is the first time the issue has received TV exposure.

The instructions to the investigators were quite explicit. They were not to go to extraordinary lengths or breach any laws when examining the trash. They were hired to simply look in the bin to see what any passerby might find.

The fishing mission threw up scores of documents carrying the names of vulnerable hospital patients, details of personal prescriptions and even the case notes of someone with mental health problems.

NAID has refused to disclose the names of the businesses and organisations involved.

The exercise found that overall, 44 per cent of the institutions, each with a legal burden to protect personal information, were casually discarding personal information. Examples included:

A private hospital discarded the medical records of 70 vulnerable patients – including their names, addresses and details of their treatment.

Outside a top London law office, a 20-page document, detailing the case of a young woman with mental health problems and in foster care, was found on the pavement in a rubbish bag. All four of the law firms whose commercial waste was subject to investigation were found to have personal client details in their waste.

Outside a national chemist chain, rubbish was found to contain over 20 prescription labels including details such as patients’ names, addresses, and details of the medication prescribed. Some also included doctors’ names and dates of birth of patients.

Every business has a legal obligation to protect the confidential information it holds on its employees, customers and suppliers. Failure to do so can result in heavy fines or even imprisonment for the person responsible.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is now able to fine businesses up to £500,000 if they lose individuals’ confidential data. This amount has been increased from £5000, to highlight the importance of data security, and to protect individuals from the threat of ID fraud.

The seventh principle of the Data Protection Act states that organisations must employ a data destruction service to destroy redundant confidential information that can be either in paper or electronic format.

Using an accredited supplier that can destroy confidential material in a secure environment will give you peace of mind that your company and associates are protected against ID Fraud.

Many batteries still contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel, which can contaminate the environment and pose a potential threat to human health when batteries are improperly disposed of. Not only do the billions upon billions of batteries in landfills pose an environmental problem, they also are a complete waste of a potential and cheap raw material.

Recycling of batteries is quite expensive however with leaps forward in Nanotechnology, China may have found a way of utilising this technology and making recycling of batteries much more profitable. It is still early days as the impact on the environment in making nanotechnology to start with needs to be balanced against what it saves by reducing the current system footprint.

Batteries are classed as hazardous waste, therefore they need to be sent to a licensed recycler who will give you a Waste Consignment Note to demonstrate, if called upon by the Environmental Agency, that you have disposed of them correctly.

An internal investigation found 10 cases where PCs were sold despite failing data removal procedures.
Another four PCs – which were about to be sold – were found to contain data restricted under arms control rules.
The space agency’s internal auditors discovered that its policies for wiping data from PCs used in the Shuttle programme have not always been followed.

They uncovered issues at four locations: the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and the Ames and Langley Research Centers.

Secret data

In some cases, tests were not being run to confirm the computers had been wiped.

Investigators also found that some PCs that had failed those verification tests were still being put up for sale.

Their report in to the incidents says its impossible to know what data was left on the sold-off equipment, but analysis of similar equipment “raises serious concerns” for Nasa.

Investigators found four PCs being prepared for sale at the Kennedy Space Center which contained data subject to export control by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

They also found dozens of PCs at the Kennedy equipment disposal facility that all had external markings listing network details.

Such details could potentially provide hackers with “unauthorised access to Nasa’s internal computer network”.
Nasa will now review and update its equipment disposals procedures.

• Environment Act
• WEEE Directive
• Hazardous Waste Regulations
• Landfill Regulations
• Electrical Equipment (Safety Regulations)
• Basal Convention, Trans Frontier Shipment of Waste

It is important that you find an IT disposal company in the UK that helps you adhere to all of these regulations. A professional firm will have all the necessary licences to carry out the task at hand and provide you with the necessary paperwork. You need to ensure that the service provider you choose has all the licences and permits to deal with hazardous waste if this is applicable.

It is also well worth checking whether the computer disposal company provides you with a certificate of data destruction. This certificate helps you ensure that the vital business data stored on computers is wiped off properly and also helps you keep track of the recycling process. It is equally important that that the IT disposal company you choose has data wiping insurance. Before signing a contract ask for copies of these documents. This way you can be certain that that they can accept full legal responsibility for your computers.

Finally, look for a WEEE certified computer disposal company that can guarantee 0% landfill. This helps you ensure 100% recycling of your IT products, causing minimal impact on the environment.

One way to ensure your laptops are properly recycled in the UK is to seek the help of a professional service provider. They can offer legally obliged recycling and disposal of WEEE items. The other option is to give your old laptops, if they are still in good condition, to charities.

Laptop Recycling UK: Security

Whether you are giving your laptop to a charity or to a recycling centre in the UK, make sure that the data stored on the device is completely erased. If the confidential data is not completely erased, it may fall into the wrong hands, opening you up to all sorts of problems. When sending off your laptop for disposal, check whether data wipe services are offered as well. If so, before reprocessing your devices, the recycling company will make use of a specialist piece of software to wipe off data in accordance with the WEEE directive and other recycling and data security laws.

If you are looking for a laptop recycling service centre in the UK that can wipe off your confidential data effectively and recycle your used electronic devices in an eco-friendly manner, Recycling Your IT would be happy to help.

We operate in full accordance with the WEEE directive, are licensed by the Environmental Agency and are fully insured on and off site. In addition to recycling, we offer asset tracking solutions and can also provide certificates that will help you meet quality assurance requirements.