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What happens to your old IT equipment
Terraguard Technologies work with businesses nationwide to collect their unwanted IT equipment and securely destroy the data on it. The hardware is then repaired, reused and redistributed, so it re-enters the economy instead of becoming waste.
The situation
There is a cupboard, and nobody is quite sure whose job it is
Most of the equipment we collect has been sitting somewhere for months. A stack of laptops from people who left. Screens from the last office move. A server nobody dares switch off because nobody remembers what is on it.
Two things are happening while it sits there. It is losing value at roughly 2% a month, so a drawer full of laptops is quietly costing between £10 and £20 per device per month. And every one of those drives still holds data that is your responsibility until somebody deals with it properly.
Neither of those is urgent enough to make it to the top of anyone's list, which is exactly why it stays where it is.
The four stages
How a collection actually runs
Four stages, a document at the end of each, and nothing that needs you to understand our industry to follow it. Each one ends with something you can put in front of an auditor.
Collection
We come to you in our own vehicles, which are tracked, with a minimum of two security vetted staff. Enhanced DBS checks are standard for operational staff, and further checks can be arranged where your site requires them. Collection and transport are never subcontracted, so the people who arrive work for us. Equipment is unloaded on return into our own alarmed, CCTV monitored facility, which has no public access.
A Waste Transfer Note, signed by both parties on the day
Data destruction
Every drive is erased in line with current guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre, formerly HMG Infosec Standard 5. Healthy drives are erased and the hardware is reused. Any drive that fails erasure is physically destroyed at our own site rather than passed on, and so is any drive where you ask us to destroy rather than wipe.
We do not offer destruction at your premises. There is no mobile shredding service, and we would rather tell you that now than at the quote stage.
An erasure result recorded against every serial number
Audit and reporting
Every item is booked in and audited individually, as its own asset, against its serial number or an asset tag we assign. That is what makes the paperwork reconcile later: an auditor picks one item and follows it from the enquiry through to the point it left us, and the numbers agree at every step.
An Asset Inventory Sheet and a Certificate of Data Destruction, both within 28 working days
Reuse, resale and donation
Equipment is tested, graded and repaired wherever repair is possible, because a working machine is worth more than its parts and lasts longer than a recycled one. Roughly 80% goes to trade, 10% direct to other businesses, and 10% is donated to charities and community groups.
Extending the life of one laptop by three years saves around 330kg of CO2, which is the single biggest environmental effect in this whole process. Recycling is what we do when reuse is genuinely not possible, and almost nothing goes to landfill, less than 5% by item count.
A CO2 report on request
What you receive
The four documents, and what each one proves
This is the part that matters at audit, so it is worth being specific about which document answers which question.
| Document | What it proves | When |
|---|---|---|
| Waste Transfer Note | That the equipment left your site legally, into the hands of a registered waste carrier. This is the duty of care record, and it is the one an environmental inspector asks for. | On the day |
| Asset Inventory Sheet | Exactly what we took, item by item. This is what you reconcile your own asset register against, and what tells you nothing went missing. | 28 working days |
| Certificate of Data Destruction | That the data is gone, with a manifest listing every device by serial number. This is your record of processing, and the document you would show your own auditor or the Information Commissioner's Office. | 28 working days |
| CO2 report | The carbon saved by reusing rather than replacing, calculated from the actual itemised list rather than an estimate. Useful for your own environmental reporting. | On request |
Redacted samples Pending your sign off, and the templates need their company name corrected first.
Scope
What we can take, and what we cannot
We collect
Business IT equipment, in any quantity from a single pallet upwards.
- ·Laptops and desktops
- ·Screens and all in one machines
- ·Servers and network equipment
- ·Hard drives and solid state drives
- ·Mobile phones, tablets and desk phones
- ·Printers and uninterruptible power supplies
- ·Cabling, docking stations and peripherals
We cannot help with
Said plainly, so nobody finds out at the quote stage.
- ·Destruction at your own premises. There is no mobile service, and everything is destroyed at our site in Wiltshire
- ·Equipment still locked to a cloud account or a mobile device management enrolment. You need to release those before collection
- ·Equipment with a BIOS password still set, for the same reason
- ·Anything outside IT equipment List to confirm
One thing worth knowing about responsibility. The data on the equipment remains yours until we collect it, and becomes ours from the point of collection. That line is in our terms, and it is the answer to "when does the risk transfer".
Where we go
Based in Wiltshire, collecting nationwide
Our facility is in Aldbourne, near Marlborough. We collect across the United Kingdom, and in practice most of our work runs along the M4 corridor and through the Thames Valley, simply because that is where we are.
Distance is not usually the deciding factor. Volume is. A small collection a long way away may not be viable on its own, but it often is if we can combine it with something else, so it is always worth asking.
- Swindon
- Marlborough
- Newbury
- Reading
- Oxford
- Bristol
- Bath
- Basingstoke
- Slough
- London
- Nationwide on request
What it costs
Usually nothing, and here is the honest version
We make our money by repairing equipment and selling it on. That is what pays for the collection, the erasure and the paperwork, which is why disposal and data wiping are typically provided completely free of charge.
There is a condition, and we would rather state it than bury it. The collection has to be financially viable, which means there needs to be enough reusable equipment in it to cover the cost of doing the job. Below that point we would need to charge. We will always tell you which side of that line you are on before you commit to anything.
Will I get money back for my kit?
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on what you have. We will not put a figure on it before we have seen it, because a number given over the phone sets an expectation that the actual equipment may not meet, and a wrong number is worse than no number.
What we will do is assess it properly on arrival, item by item, and come back to you with a real position.