Reaching behind shoes and file folders, I grope around my closet until I find what I’m looking for: a Toshiba Satellite laptop. I’d owned it since 1991, and hadn’t used it in 15 years. It had moved with me into and out of apartments, condos and townhouses in four different states. I kept meaning to recycle it, but anytime I looked into my options—such as a retail chain store with an electronic recycling program, or my local county’s household hazardous material disposal site—I came across disclaimers warning people to first clear the hard drive of personally identifiable information.
Hard drive? I’d heard the term before, but where was it exactly? And how does one erase it? For sure erase it? Over and over, I’d tell myself I would take the time to figure it out. One day. Now, that day is here. Dusting off my Toshiba, I walk into my home office and slip my hand underneath my bookshelves in search of a second laptop, a Gateway Solo (last used in 1999). In the car, my two laptops, plus some old cords and battery packs, are piled on the passenger’s seat. I head to Capitol Heights, Maryland, and when I reach Olive Street, I scan the line of warehouse doors until I see the one with the picture of a flying turtle.
Elizabeth Wilmot, founder and owner of Turtle Wings/Data Killers, started her environmental services company in 2005. It recycles tech trash in addition to providing data destruction services. Inside the warehouse, there are tidy rows of monitors, printers, cords, cameras, mainframes, fax machines and other miscellaneous equipment. Good parts are refurbished and resold, or they’re stripped to a component level. “Everything from the copper in a cord to ribbon wire can be reused and kept out of landfills,” Wilmot says.
Prior to opening her business, Wilmot worked for Citigroup where she traveled overseas. Horrified at the sight of nasty garbage dumps overcrowded with defunct electronics, she wanted to stop it. “E-waste doesn’t decompose,” she says. It sits, leaching harmful chemicals like lead, cadmium and mercury. Growing up, Wilmot remembers how her mother would save pieces of string and reuse tin foil, no matter how wrinkly. The practice of being globally responsible stuck with Wilmot through adulthood. Sharing a familiar tale, Wilmot recounts how, in 2004, she realized she had been hanging onto an old computer because she wasn’t sure what to do about the personal information embedded in its parts. One thing led to another, and her business was born in her kitchen.
Initially, she focused on serving residential neighborhoods, sending around a van to pick up unwanted tech trash. Within a matter of weeks, she received a call asking whether her services extended to commercial businesses. As of that moment, it did. In early 2006, she moved her to her current location. Today, her biggest clients are the U.S. government and large corporations. With additional sites in Chicago, Sacramento and Dallas, her business can service the entire nation. Wilmot sends trucks with shredders mounted on the back directly to entities with highly sensitive or classified information where one can witness the purging, shredding, or destroying. Individuals, like me, with personal equipment can leave their tech trash in a secure location at a residence for pickup. Then, Turtle Wings/Data Killers will bring it back to their warehouse for proper data destruction and recycling.
Wilmot was kind enough to let me see the inner workings of the warehouse. Inside, she hands me a hardhat and goggles before leading me to a gigantic machine. At 6,600 pounds, and with four shafts, it is designed to shred over 1,000 pounds of metal and plastic per hour. I hold my two hard drives over the chute (one of her employees had showed me how to unscrew the back of my laptops and pop them out). Peering down the large orange mouth, I drop them in. In a split second, the machine spits them out at my feet, a confetti of teeny shiny parts.
There. I brush my hands. No one will be able to access my old college poetry now! Or, for that matter, the details of my college bank account (which probably never held more than a couple hundred dollars). Who knows what other personal or embarrassing information was buried in there—probably not much. So, yes, I admit my trip to Turtle Wings is overkill. Next time I’ll simply call for pick up. But I do feel better learning about the inner workings of a reputable business and seeing how the parts are organized for recycling.
Turtle Wings/Data Killers charges $15.50 to destroy a hard drive that’s been pulled out of a machine—not a bad price for peace of mind. “There are volume discounts for large quantities,” Wilmot adds. There are also alternative ways to destroy a hard drive. You can take the hard drive out and sledge it with a hammer. Or, says Wilmot, “You can drag a very, very strong magnet across the hard drive—that would mess it up enough.” You can also download programs designed to wipe the hard drive clean. “But if there is a bad section, the program might skip over it and there’s no way to know,” Wilmot warns.
Back at home. I drag out my Dell computer, also buried under a bookshelf. Then I glance at my Sony laptop and sigh. The Dell has been defunct for about five years, and my Sony is on its last leg. But I’m not ready to wipe them clean and recycle them—yet. There’s information on them I want to convert to another medium before destroying the hard drive. I still need to figure out how to do that. And I will. One day.
AT A GLANCE
On laptops and PCs, the hard drive is the only place that has the capacity to store personal data. But don’t forget about your other tech trash. You’ll want to erase the SIM card in your cell phone before recycling it, as well as the hard drive in copiers, which store images of the pages it’s copied.
