Effective July 1, 2011, the South Carolina Manufacturer Responsibility and Consumer Convenience Information Technology Equipment Collection and Recovery Act, S.C. Code Ann. §§48-60-05 – 48-60-150, bans televisions, computers, computer monitors and printers from the solid waste system. To look for recycling options in your area, visit the E-cycle website here . Don’t forget to sanitize your computers, smartphones, copiers and other devices before you recycle them.

A few years back, a professor at a well-known law school told me how his university dealt with old computer hard drives. “We used to pay students to smash them with sledge hammers,” he recalled, “until someone got a piece of metal in his eye. Then we stopped.” Around the same time I heard this tale, I discovered an experiment by MIT researchers. The students at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (I’m sure you have a visual of what they might have looked like) purchased used hard drives from eBay and other sources. Of the approximately 170 drives, they found only 12 that were properly sanitized. The rest all contained data, including credit card numbers and medical records. Doh! This study sparked another project, this one involving “drive slagging.” If you know that slag relates to molten metals, you probably figured out that drive slagging means melting down your hard drive. If you’d like to see some neat pictures, check out the link. I think you will agree, there’s no way to rescue that data!

Aside from melting, foolproof ways of sanitizing a hard drive so that it can be disposed of are few and the techniques for rescuing data on hard drives have improved over the last few years. I’ve heard experts in computer forensics state that data can be retrieved from hard drives that were submerged in sea water, burned, and otherwise abused. Such feats are not inexpensive, of course. Spending $1000 for one drive would not be unusual (which is why you’re glad you made that backup, right?).

So, what’s the best way to dispose of a hard drive? See my eCycle post from December 2009.

Did Santa Claus bring you a new electronic item? Or did you purchase new hardware as a year-end capital expense? Whatever the reason, if you find yourself with old computers or electronics that are too old to benefit anyone (even the National Cristina Foundation won’t take Pentium II computers anymore), you need to responsibly dispose of the old clunker.

Being responsible means taking or shipping it to a government or private recycling center. It means doing a little research on the Internet to find out where to go and which location accepts what.  It means sanitizing hard drives and other storage media so that you don’t breach your ethical and legal duties to safeguard your client’s property (not to mention your own personal data). This can be done using software like Darik’s Boot And Nuke, Disk Wipe or Eraser .

You can also use a physical device to erase, like Drive eRazer, which works well if you have miscellaneous hard drives without the computer case. CD’s, DVD’s, floppies and tapes are the Tribbles of the law office – they have a way of self-proliferating. Most new paper shredders can shred CD’s and old floppies.

Once your computer is sanitized and free of data, you need to find someone who will accept it for proper disposal. It is not proper to put a computer in a landfill!  For a list of e-cycling websites, go to the PMAP pages of SC Bar.org and find “old computers.”  Be sure to read the article there on disposing of computers responsibly –  by yours truly and Ross Kodner: “Dumpster Disasters.”  Good luck and happy e-cycling!