Value Recovery from Used Electronics, Phase 2


Project Leaders



Carol Handwerker, Purdue


Bill Olson,
ASM International (formerly with Seagate)
 

 

 

End-of-Project Webinar & Report

 

Presentations

Project Statement of Work and Project Statement

Purpose of Project

This fast-turn project project will focus on collaboration in hard disk drive design, reuse, remanufacturing, and materials and component recovery that enables a robust, sustainable circular supply economy for hard disk drives. As articulated clearly by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the creation of a circular economy for any product requires a multi-stakeholder approach. From the users’ viewpoint, to be effective, the rationales, pathways and incentives must be compelling enough to convince users to channel their products into the value recovery stream. For HDDs in particular, data security concerns (and the legal and corporate liabilities associated with the release of confidential and sensitive data) frequently lead HDD users in the US to shred their HDDs, even if they are fully functional. One of the goals of the project is to engage with HDD users and all those in the value recovery supply chain to assess users’ data security concerns and obligations and best practices required to avoid shredding.  The stakeholder groups identified in Phase 1 (users, manufacturers, service providers, and parts manufacturers, and for others critical to value recovery of HDD) must work together to analyze the capabilities of existing and new technologies and identify the gaps needed to “complete the circle.”  The purpose of this  project will be to take the next steps in developing a circular economy for HDDs.

Previous Project

Phase 1

For Additional Information

Mark Schaffer
marks@inemi.org