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Crate repair service
launched by
Pluscrates
Crate rental specialist Pluscrates
has introduced a new crate repair
service to support the growing use
of Returnable Transit Packaging (RTP)
by major retailers and supermarkets.
Currently an estimated 100,000
damaged crates, or totes, are
scrapped each year.
Pluscrates’ Managing Director John
Mitchell said: “We’ve been recycling the
plastic raw material in our own broken
totes for many years, but more recently
we decided to introduce a ‘speed
welding’ technique to repair damaged
totes and return them into service. It
proved very successful, so it was a logical
step to begin offering the same repair
service to our clients in the retail sector.”
Speed welding uses a plastic welder
similar to a soldering iron to fuse broken
parts together. On average, the cost of
repairing and recycling is half that of
purchasing new stock.
Waste not, want not
Since launching O2recycle in
conjunction with O2 in 2009, mobile
phone recycler Redeem Holdings
Limited has made payments of more
than £50 million to O2 customers for
their traded-in mobile phones and
contributed over £2 million to O2’s
Think Big community programme.
Redeem, which recently announced
a strategic partnership with Blancco,
the global leader in certified data
erasure solutions, securely wipes all
data from smartphones before they are
recycled or refurbished for resale.
www.redeem.co.uk
Free computers
Prism Disposal is offering free recycled computers to registered
UK charities. Gary David Smith, co-founder of the Prism Total
IT Solutions subsidiary, said: “We are constantly receiving
computers that can be re-used and if charities email us with an
outline of what capabilities they require we will match machines
to the requests as they become available.” Before donating the
computers, Prism deletes all data to Ministry of Defence (MoD)
standards.
www.prismdisposal.com
Fifty new jobs at DCI
Dynamic Cassette International Ltd (DCI),
Europe’s leading collector and recycler of
inkjet and toner cartridges, has doubled the
remanufacturing capacity at its factory in
Boston, Lincolnshire and, in the last three
months, created an additional 50 jobs. The
expansion follows the addition of Epson remanufactured cartridges to its
product range.
www.jettec.com
Second hand
computer costs NHS
Surrey £200,000
The importance of removing
data from old computers and
other electronic devices before
recycling or re-use is highlighted
by a £200,000 fine imposed by
the Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO) on NHS Surrey after
3,000 patient records were found
on a second-hand computer bought
through an online auction site.
The PC was sold by a data
destruction company employed by
NHS Surrey since March 2010. The
company provided data and computer
destruction services for free on the
basis that they could sell salvageable
materials after the hard drives had
been securely destroyed.
After being alerted to the data
breach by the purchaser of the
computer, NHS Surrey managed
to reclaim a further 39 computers
sold by the trading arm of their data
destruction provider, 10 of which had
previously belonged to NHS Surrey. Of
these, three still contained sensitive
personal data.
An ICO investigation found that
NHS Surrey failed to observe and
monitor the data destruction process;
had no contract in place explaining the
provider’s legal requirements under the
Data Protection Act; and had mislaid
the records of equipment passed for
destruction between March 2010 and
February 2011.
The data destruction company
was unable to trace where the Trust’s
computers had ended up or confirm how
many might still contain personal data.
NHS Surrey was dissolved on 31
March 2013 with some of their legal
responsibilities passing to the NHS
Commissioning Board.
Guidance on how to ensure old
IT equipment is destroyed in
compliance with the Data Protection
Act can be found on the ICO website at
www.ico.org.uk.
Extend PC life with memory
upgrades
Online memory upgrade retailer
Crucial.com is urging businesses
to consider memory upgrades
before replacing their computers
following new analysis suggesting
that UK consumers throw out
more than 5,000 tonnes of PCs and
laptops each year – the equivalent
in weight to 790 double-decker
buses or 27 Angel of the North
sculptures.
According to a survey of 2,000
consumers, 38% of people have
thrown out an old laptop or PC because they wanted one that
would boot up more quickly, run faster and handle multiple tasks
simultaneously. Almost 37% said they would delay buying a new
machine if they could make their old computer run faster.
Roddy McLean of Crucial.com said: “People often go out and
buy a brand new computer simply because their old one doesn’t
perform as quickly as it used to and this habit can be extremely
costly, time consuming and damaging to the environment. Rather
than discarding a perfectly good computer, the problem of a slow-
running laptop or PC can be resolved in as little as ten minutes
with an easy system memory or SSD upgrade.”
www.crucial.com/uk
greenAgenda
Electronics recycler Redeem Ltd has re-located its headquarters
from Falkirk to 10,740 square feet of office accommodation in the
Pyramids Business Park,West Lothian.
Cash for old projectors
NEC Display Solutions has launched a ‘return,
refurbish and reuse’ programme for any make
or model of projector. Open to customers who
have recently purchased an NEC projector,
ReTrade pays cash for unwanted projectors
that are then refurbished or recycled. NEC
expects to refurbish 85% of returned
projectors.
www.nec-display-solutions.com