Information Security & Product Destruction News - Sept/Oct 2004

Intercon Solutions Establishes a Successful Formula for Electronics Recovery

Intercon Solutions has found an easy way for businesses and consumers to properly dispose of e-waste. The Chicago-based company utilizes a concept that virtually eliminates the chance that sensitive information will pass into the wrong hands during the recycling process. The concept originated from Intercon's original days as an automotive product recycler and hazardous waste destroyer.

The concept is a simple one - don't worry about the diminutive amounts of money that can be saved or gained from conventional methods of reselling old products. Instead, break everything down into its raw materials. Then sell them. The result is better security - and better profit.

In its history, Intercon has specialized in metals and other hard materials like plastics, which initially served the automotive industry. Its foundation is in "no-resale." It merely melts down the ultimate end of a 100-percent used product and then moves the material into the hands of someone who uses it in place of a virgin feedstock.

This idea was adapted into hazardous material recovery, then, into the related filed of recycling of electronic products, including those that could contain sensitive information. Instead of promoting the idea to its customer to gain a few extra bucks off the back-end sale of its obsolete cell phones, computers and other electronics devices, Intercon serves its customers by showing the "no-value" of obsolete products and a security guarantee of no secure information leaks by using the fundamental meltdown process.

"A company can spend a heck of a lot more money on paying a firm to delete sensitive information from its computes and selling them for a few bucks than by just making sure the computer is destroyed altogether," said John Vanek, director of business development for Intercon. "Computers and cellphones have such a quick obsolescence rate now that more of a disservice is performed by trying to re-use them."

Here's how Vanek's simple formula works: In labor hours, it takes 1,000 hours for a computer to be completely cleaned of any sensitive information and then resold or donated. With Intercon's process, it takes only 1,000 minutes for a computer to be de-manufactured and all the materials to be taken apart and melted down for the purpose of being reused to make something else (or thrown out). At the same time all the information is destroyed as well.

Although donating computers and cell phones to a charity or school might seem like a very altruistic thing, it is not necessarily a very utilitarian concept. Obsolete products could have so little value that sending them back out into circulation could cause even more waste, harm to the environment, cost more money and waste more energy.

"I'm not against donating things and doing good for society and making it better for the next generation," said Vanek. "I'm just saying it's not good to try to squeeze something out of a product that has nothing to be squeezed out of it, due to its obsolescence. If a kid has to learn on a computer using DOS technology, or something even more up-to-date but just as obsolete, he's really not learning anything of use."

But, is the security still as high as that of a company that removes everything from the hard drive? "I suppose something could be let loose before it is destroyed, but we have a very secure facility," said Vanek. "I don't think anybody can search for much information in a melted-down computer. We've taken shredding to its highest form. We do have a back-up plan. We do have facilities we can go to that are gust as secure as Defense Department security. We do have armed guards bringing in the equipment and watching it get melted. We also have a very clean facility. We're enclosed and nothing is exposed here."

Intercon began recycling parts for the automotive industry in 1987. With the large size of its facilities, Intercon has the storage space to house thousands of computers at a time waiting to be destroyed. And the turnaround time is quick. On top of providing customers with a cost-savings and piece of mind, regarding security and responsibility to the environment, Intercon has also been of service to the communities surrounding its sites, creating several job opportunities for the locals. The process workers go through in providing Intercon's service has created jobs in categories previously not listed in the Federal Occupational Work Handbook.

"We still encourage our customers to get whatever use they can out of their electronics products," Vanek said. "We encourage them to pass them on to a different user or put it at some other site in the company where it still can be used. At one point, though, it becomes elementary. It has an end, and trying to stretch it beyond that end can turn out to be very costly. A lot of our newer customers and some of our older ones are looking at our system and finding it more cost effective. It's still early, but as the obsolescence rate gets shorter and shorter for these products, companies are going to have to turn over these electronics faster and faster." Also, if plastics, metals and glass are getting melted down at a faster rate, more and more non-virgin materials are placed back into circulation for making new products and less mining is needed.

"We don't know where the materials we are melting down are going," said Vanek. "A lot of manufacturers still like to use virgin materials and are still mining, but they can see a cost savings and be softer on the environment if they did mine less. A lot of what we ship out could be getting sent (by a middle man) to other countries, but pieces and parts that are not melted down are shipped out at a higher rate than what we may send out it could be going to other countries. That means less of the end product is reused here anyway, getting used by another country and in turn using foreign labor to make a new product. New mining is not a good thing for an economy or an environment. People have ways of knowing who is using virgin material and who is not."

A three-pronged approach Intercon takes to marketing its services to customers is:

It's a good investment for the company;
Material and information is 100 percent destroyed and recycled; and
It becomes a knowledge center for its customers, offering solutions one step ahead of technology.

"Technology is ongoing and it's all about progression," said Vanek. "In electronics you have a train that will keep on going for a long time to come. It doesn't make sense to get in front of the train to stop it, because it'll just run over you. The idea is to keep progressing with it, instead of clinging to the obsolete."

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