IBM has announced that it processed over 100 million pounds of used and obsolete computer gear, as part of its computer renewal and recycling efforts worldwide in 2006, returning less than 1% of non-hazardous material to landfills.

This is the fourth straight year in a row that IBM has managed to decrease its return-to-landfill volumes, demonstrating the company‘‘s commitment to IT renewal, refurbish, reuse and resale in the secondary market.

IBM claims to be one of the few vendors in the industry with brand agnostic computer recycling operations, taking back the equipment of all other IT manufacturers. Further, IBM started a new business in 2005 to recycle sophisticated medical devices, like MRI and medical diagnostic equipment, which are reused, refurbished and resold or leased to local and community hospitals.

Each week IBM Global Asset Recovery Services takes in more than 40,000 pieces of IT gear from clients worldwide. The equipment, which includes IBM and non-IBM servers, PCs, laptops, mainframes, is recycled or refurbished at 22 sites around the world.

It is estimated that more than 600 million corporate PCs alone are due for retirement by 2010. Of those, it is estimated that only 2-5% will be scrubbed of sensitive data and recycled. IBM, as part of its Global Asset Recovery Services program, offers customers a disk overwriting service that overwrites the hard drives to US Department of Defense standards.

According to recently released 2006 numbers, IBM‘‘s computer renewal and disposal operations processed some 108,209,492 lbs (49,083 metric tons MT) worldwide. New uses were found for 99.22% of all e-waste collected -- only 0.78 percent of e-waste collected was sent to landfills worldwide. These operations thus outperformed the company‘‘s PELM landfill metric target, which is to maintain a landfill rate below 3.0 percent. When compared to 2005 volumes, these numbers represent a 55.43 percent decrease in the volume sent to landfill.

Since 1995, IBM has documented the collection and recovery of over 1.4 billion pounds (more than 642 million kilograms) of product and product waste worldwide (over 1.2 billion lbs diverted from landfills).