With the breakdown in global recycling channels due primarily to countries like China upping their standards and refusing recycled materials, there is renewed interest and emphasis within e-waste on sanitizing data and reusing data-bearing IT assets. More than ever, organizations of all sizes in the public and private sectors are rethinking their IT asset disposition (ITAD) strategy, putting equipment reuse first whenever possible over asset destruction and recycling.
In early 2019, a shift in the global recycling marketplace revealed serious failures in global recycling strategies. Photos began to appear in mainstream media of recycling processors and shippers piling up recycled materials by the ton that could no longer go to countries that previously sought them for conversion into new goods. Those countries were producing enough of their own recycled materials, so it no longer made financial sense to accept them from countries like the U.S. Without much warning, these countries abruptly stopped accepting shipments, and materials started piling up at their points of origin.