Ruminating on Waste Rules and Angel De Maria

Having watched the mighty Arsenal bravely overcome the diving, moaning and blatant cheating of Manchester United the other night, I find myself ruminating on rules. Everyone has to live by the rules to a certain extent, but equally everyone bends them once in a while. You get a touch in the box and you go down, or so some people say. It is the professional thing to do.

No Angel De Maria, it isn’t. No Adnan Januzaj it isn’t clever, it marks you down as a cheat and people will hate you for it. But maybe for once football is not the best example. Most of us don’t bend the rules to gain a conspicuous unfair advantage, we do it because it is easier. Much easier. And this brings me to the subject of when is waste waste, and when is it not waste.

Fascinating huh? Even as a pleasant five minute read to help digest your tuna and mayo wrap, this blog is heading for a new low. But actually it is quite important. 

Take a look at this little link and you will see what I mean. Business Waste

If you cannot be bothered to read that scintillating government offering let me summarise. You need a license to move your waste. You need to know whether it is hazardous or not. If you get someone else to move it, you have a duty of care to make sure they deal with it legally. And you need waste transfer notes to record the whole process.

If you ignore all this and get caught you will be hung drawn and quartered. Your head will then be displayed on a spike outside the town hall to warn off other criminals. Or you will be fined. One or the other.

But when is it waste? EReco MD Jane Taylor and I discussed this on a train yesterday. I have man flu so some of the details are a little hazy but we came to the conclusion that our approach to life here in eReco land is belt and braces stuff. If a client asks us to remove something it is treated as waste because we do not, at that stage, know whether the kit has any life left in it. We have all the relevant licenses and we produce waste transfer notes. We ask what we are collecting and make sure we have listed all the different classifications, so the hazardous box is ticked off. No fines here, move along now, nothing to see.

Businesses in general do not like getting fined. It’s embarrassing and bosses tend to get grumpy because their boss gets grumpy. Now I am not sure if there are waste transfer patrols out there all ready to catch the unaware, but it is another thing to bear in mind. This really is not a subject to be casual about, right from the get go.

And hazardous waste includes laptops and monitors. Yes really. Every sales rep is technically lugging around a hazardous backpack. And as soon as you deem it redundant, you need a license to transport it.

I know. My head aches too. But this is why we are here. Stop worrying about it and call 01342-777550 and let me worry for you. I am good at it. Even whilst shouting at Angel De Maria and calling Louis Van Gaal names, I was reminding myself to check the paperwork for today’s collections.

It’s all too much hassle

Hassle. Life is full of it and we all need less of it. A peaceful existence. A steady routine with no nasty surprise. We all want a few nice surprises, but not nasty ones. We all want a work/life balance, a bit tilted towards the life side if we are honest, but we want to enjoy what we do without hassle. That is the important thing. Reduce the stress.

(Therefore I would not necessarily recommend you supporting Arsenal! I am not a happy bunny this morning!)

Except when it comes to paying for it, of course. Less hassle is a hard thing to price. Is it worth £50 to you? £100? £1000? I talk to people most days who have a small pile of kit to dispose of and they are horrified by the cost. One said to me the other day that I would sell his precious waste, as if that was a license to print gold! So why should he pay me to collect it? I was forced to point out a few facts of life.

Firstly, he could sell it himself if he wants to, no skin off my nose. Anyone can use eBay. But it would be a lot of hassle to earn £25, if his item sold. And what about the PAT test, or the software? Or his data? He soon went off that idea.

Secondly, if he wanted to avoid transport costs, he could drop it off to me. Maybe send it by courier at his risk? Cheaper but his data is still there. He is liable. And is he transporting waste then? So not legal really, if challenged. And he is a bit off the beaten track.

Thirdly, he could turn to one of the free collection services, couldn’t he? Well no, even those generous souls will not collect small quantities. Most insist on 30 items and the small stuff goes into boxes to be counted as one item, so his three items don’t really merit a free collection.

So his option is to pay a fair price and have all his boxes ticked, or sit on his pile until either it gets bigger and becomes more economical with economies of scale or some other miraculous solution presents itself.

This is why so many offices have a small pile of WEEE in a corner, on a shelf or in a storeroom. I call it the hassle/cost ratio, and until the hassle becomes greater than the sum involved, nothing ever gets done. It may very well say ‘we support sustainability’ on the company website, but when it comes to paying £99 to get rid of those two old PC’s, a knackered printer and a box of junk, sod the Ozone layer.

My old Gran used to love saying ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.’ It is true with the family budget but not so true in business. Because you are not paying £99 for nothing in this regular little scenario. Let me tell you what you would be paying for with eReco, to emphasise my point:

Secure collection. Two men with the vehicle, both security checked. Vehicle never left unattended and your data always protected (and covered by our insurance).

Diesel, road tax, maintenance and rental for our vehicle.

Provision of Waste Transfer Notes, Consignment notes, asset lists and certificates of data destruction.

Data erasure. Our Ben’s time plus the license fee to use Infosec 5 level Tabernus software.

 

Asset tracking through our system. So that you can prove an audit trail.

PAT Testing, cleaning, repair, loading of software and marketing.

Recycling anything that cannot be remarketed. We never put anything into a landfill. We will store the constituent parts (sometimes for a very long time) until we have a load viable for sale.

Facility costs, staff wages and digestive biscuits. (No one at eReco does a stroke without the promise of a digestive biscuit).

I know that is teaching Granny to suck eggs stuff. But that is what £99 has to cover. 

Best case scenario in terms of resale of a job like that is £75, worst case scrap value is about £10, and we do not know what state the kit is in until we pick it up of course.

We need to remember what is important here. And that is managing the risk of data breaches and keeping electrical equipment out of landfill. The hassle of the former is off the clock stressful and the latter is our duty to future generations.

Does £99 still sound so expensive? And Arsenal, I love you, but if you don't learn to defend, I am considering a divorce!

Wenger’s Woes and ITAD Best Practise

Arsene Wenger is an honourable man of obvious integrity. As manager of Arsenal Football Club he has suffered from occasional bouts of short-sightedness but he is generally respected for his achievements over the last 18 years or so. But right now he is being abused by a portion of society for which there is as yet no printable descriptor.

Why?

Because Arsenal are 6^th in the Premier League and in the last 16 of the Champions League. Not a great season so far admittedly but no reason to panic. But panicking is what we do best in this day and age. We can panic in 140 characters or less in a matter of seconds. We can abuse. We can call on the support of heavyweight thinkers like Piers Morgan.

There is something about our society today that looks to apportion instant blame, without assessing the facts, without waiting for the dust to settle. The ability to comment instantly, and be vile and abusive without much fear of retaliation brings out the very worst in human nature.

In my view, the media fan these flames to an intolerable degree. Almost every news program seems to include Twitter comments from ordinary people. Something is trending usually before the BBC knows what is going on and we fly off on many strange tangents until the truth emerges from the mist. Can you imagine if Twitter had been around the day Diana died? #thedukedidit

Data scares get the same sort of treatment, maybe without the tribal fury of football, but any company caught out losing or abusing data gets a proper public hanging (you were wondering how I would get this back on topic weren’t you?). RBS were the latest example. Their IT system crashed denying their customers access to their money and the regulators fined them some £60m for having the temerity to make a mistake.

The comments on Social Media were as bad as Wenger. The faceless board of RBS, mostly owned by the taxpayers of this country at present, were pilloried and heads were supposed to roll. And then something else happened, or Arsenal won 6-0, and people moved on.

Which is nonsense. The whole furore missed the point as far as I was concerned, which in this particular example was in a boring little interview I heard on Radio 4. One of the experts consulted suggested that our banks are still using antiquated systems because there were serious security doubts about investing in newer stuff, and that the RBS problems were caused by the simple fact that no one knew how to fix the problem when it arose. The people who designed this kit have moved on, or retired, and the system is allegedly held together by sticking plaster.

I cannot vouch for this particular version of events but surely it merited further investigation, and those of a certain vintage with a cynical nature will admit that it has the stench of truth. But no, the media do not do much serious investigation anymore. The public attention span does not allow for it and the world had moved on. Twitter was alive with pictures of cute kittens.

Except I can’t, I am afraid. Move on, that is. I make my living out of data security and data protection needs to be on the agenda all the time. There are rules for this sort of stuff, but big business tends to comply in an offhand sort of fashion, paying lip service, doing its best to keep out of trouble but not taking the intention of the rules seriously.

If prevention really is better than cure the ICO and the banking regulators should be ensuring that the banks invest properly in a safe and secure infrastructure, not just sitting back and fining them when it all goes wrong. Ideally this sort of joined up thinking should be applied to all levels of data security and we could address some of the anomalies.

Like what, I hear you cry? Well, I will give you just one for today. Any business controlled by the Financial Conduct Authority has extra responsibilities beyond those on ordinary businesses. There is for instance a strong suggestion in their published fact sheet that hard drives should be wiped using specialist software before disposal, before the redundant equipment actually leaves the office.

Does this happen?

Well, I can only tell you this. EReco are one of only a few ITAD specialists who will send one of our teams to your office to run our software in your own secure environment. This is exactly the sort of software the FCA are talking about, and whilst it is not rocket science you need some training and not everyone can buy the software in the first place. Bearing in mind the FCA advice, you would think that our lads are out all the time, wouldn’t you?

Not so. Many of our financial customers are extremely secure, and we help them to remain so, but we have only rarely been engaged to data wipe on site. Read the FCA data fact sheet for yourself and see how many of these suggestions are being followed by companies you visit? FCA Factsheet

I am not saying these companies are taking any risks. If someone is using eReco, or indeed another reputable ITAD supplier, we take data security really very seriously indeed, right from the point of collection. It may be that the guidelines are too strict? It may be that the mobile shredders take up a lot of this business, which would be a shame as that is not the best solution environmentally. But the fact is that the rules are not being followed to the letter, even if many if not most are doing their best to follow the spirit.

In part, I think this is our fault. Not just eReco, but the entire industry. We are not strong enough at highlighting best practise. We have not effectively marketed our wares to SME’s, including selling the need for sustainability as well as data security, but also the regulators have failed to educate their members. I would like to see much clearer, unambiguous direction from the FCA, the ICO and other interested parties.

This is something we are trying to address, not least through this humble blog.

Risk Management, Own Goals and Kieran Gibb's Left Leg

Own goals are annoying. As Kieran Gibbs stuck out a foot and ruined my weekend on Saturday evening it occurred to me that fate was against my beloved Arsenal FC. Because even when the cross cum shot hit his errant shinbone, it could have gone anywhere. It was fate that stuck it in the far corner and shoved us on our way to ignominious defeat.

Risk management is an undervalued skill in modern business. It does tend to get lost in the general tedium of processes and procedures, all of which are really designed to prevent something. For instance, I personally loath the culture of excessive health and safety. It is ridiculous that some schools ban their pupils from playing conkers, for example. However, at the core of it all, someone is just trying to prevent unnecessary accidents. (Mind you, is there such a thing as a necessary accident?)

Any business needs to try and remove fate from the equation. ‘Management’ should never trust to luck and hope that our left back won’t bump into the goalkeeper and still be getting up when the ball is heading his way. So a lot of people in little offices spend a lot of time and money trying to avoid the avoidable. It makes sense.

We end up with procedures for everything. And most of them have a flow chart somewhere. Every option and decision has been considered and as long as we stick to the procedures everything will turn out fine. In Arsenal’s case, if our Polish goalkeeper and English left back had managed to shout at each other, thus preventing a collision, Manchester United would never have been handed a one nil lead on a plate. Dear Kieran would then not have spent the rest of the game playing as a shadow centre forward, leaving behind him a gap so huge even Wayne Rooney managed to scamper through to score a second. Yes, we let a man who allegedly looks like Donkey from the Shrek movies score. It certainly turned me a nice shade of green! (And yes, I am bitter. Very.)

The simple fact is human beings do not always follow procedures. Fate sometimes takes a hand but more often than not we think we can cut a corner here or there. Maybe to save five minutes, or maybe because we think we know best. And nowhere is this human trait more obvious than in the disposal of old equipment. (Yes, you knew I would get back on topic sooner or later, but I am not finished with Arsenal yet, believe me. Not by a long chalk.)

There are rules, laws even, and therefore there are procedures which should be followed, or should be. In big companies, and especially in any businesses which are closely regulated, such as lawyers, accountants and medical institutions, ignoring the risks is insane. But people do it all the time.

I am relatively new to this lark, but it already does my head in. Not quite as much as watching Arsenal self destruct, but it is getting there. Why would anyone risk a big fine and possible ruin by letting any old Wayne, Robin or Angel De Flipping Maria take away their old IT equipment? Of course they said they will do it properly and at the wonderful price of FREE! 

Who could resist such a deal because the only risk you have is 2% of your global turnover, severe brand damage and an extremely large dent in your own personal career!

We charge a bit for mileage plus 85p a kilo to collect assorted kit (a bit more if it is hazardous) and charge £5 per hard disk to erase all the data and provide you with all the paperwork you could ever want. More than Wayne Rooney could ever want to read that is for sure. Then, if your kit is re-saleable, we will sell it and after our costs, share the proceeds with you. That is peanuts.

So, to use a reputable, properly accredited IT recycling specialist will cost you a little bit, but you will have followed the letter of the law and have the paperwork to prove it. As Harry Potter said when he was finished with the magical marauders map of Hogwarts, ‘mischief managed’. That is risk management in a nutshell, all done and dusted.

It is what any half decent process will tell you to do. Get a decent supplier, check that they do it all properly and get it done. It’s not rocket science. So why do so many people ignore commonsense and use the first person that says they can do it for nothing?

So, do me a favour. Consider managing your own risks, regardless of your size. And if you are Wojciech Szczęsny, next time you come for a cross, please call very loudly to prevent accidents. Preferably in English so that Kieran definitely gets it...

The Back Room Boys

Enough pontificating for one week. It’s time to introduce ourselves properly. Let’s have a look behind the scenes at eReco and see what all the fuss is about.

Not me.

I am not the star of this show at all. You can read my profile or connect to me on Twitter (@hughbessant) if you want more of me, but I warn you, my personal tweets are more usually Arsenal related, or right now focussed on how anyone who appears on TOWIE can be called a celebrity and how pathetic her performance was. I am also on LinkedIn, as are eReco and we would be delighted if you would connect and follow us.

But what I really want to talk about is the guts of the operation; Dom, Ben and John to name but three. These are the gentlemen who assess all the kit that is booked into our state of the art, fully tracked facility (it’s a warehouse, ok, but we have gadgets).

This is the clever bit.

I have told you about the average scrap value of a printer - £5 or just a little less. Which by the way we can only get when we have a big enough load to make it worthwhile, so we might store plastic and metal for a long time before we can extract any value. I have also told you that extending the lifecycle of any electrical appliance is the best option environmentally – 80% of the environmental damage is done during manufacture, so the longer it lasts after that, the better.

So Dom, Ben and John check each piece of kit, wipe the hard drive obviously, and assess the resale value. This varies. It is a market, so the laws of supply and demand apply. It’s not quite Wolf of Wall Street stuff, but you have to know the players and understand what is selling.

Quite often we get lots of something all at once. If we just dumped that on EBay, for instance, the market value might fall – so we can keep some bits of kit for a long time, dribbling it out into the market to get the best possible price.

The experience to do all of this has been built up over a number of years. Dom is the printer Guru. If they did them on antiques road show he would be perfect for it. Mastermind would be good for him if he could do his pet subject. In testing and preparing kit for resale, having someone with his skills gives us a definite edge.

We have this all worked out. Not only do we check each piece of kit to make sure it is safe to use but we make sure there is no comeback to the original owner. We can even provide warranties to the purchaser sometimes. We can run staff purchase schemes or donate the proceeds to charity. All of this takes time and effort, and John is a West Ham supporter, so life is not always easy for him.

I explain all this to help you understand, dear reader, that when we put your old PC in the back of our van, we do still have quite a lot to do. Quite apart from generating waste transfer notes, asset lists and all the other reports I am still learning about, we get the best out of your cast offs. We are knee deep in processes, we can tell you exactly what happened to any piece of kit we have collected since eReco time began, identifying it by serial number and tracking it all the way through our system until it was either scrapped or resold. 

Believe me, our staff meetings are a barrel of laughs as we go through all this stuff.

Having said that, as a newbie, I am extremely impressed by the team here. The knowledge is truly amazing and the enthusiasm for what we do impressive. I have made a few jokes about our green credentials but we do have them, we just don’t wear them on our sleeves. We hang onto stuff to get it back into the market, rather than junking it. We have a treasure trove of kit, a living time capsule of IT progress.

Some of it doesn’t fetch much, just a tenner here or there. But it gets used again, that is the main thing. That is the myth I am trying to deflate. This stuff is not worth a fortune. We make money out of most of it in bulk, but you have to collect a lot to add up to something worth banking. We get paid by the ton not the unit.

So spare a thought for Dom, Ben and John when you consider what to do with that old printer. They will give it a loving new home if at all possible, or a humane exit.