Plastic has become ubiquitous in our world. It has been found just about everywhere on earth, even inside mosquitoes. Since it was first developed, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, which is enough to cover the country of Argentina ankle deep.

Plastics fall into two broad categories: thermoplastics, which can be melted down repeatedly, and thermosets, which cannot be remelted once they are set. There are seven main groups of plastic based on chemical makeup but dozens of different types of plastic. Plastics can be classified by chemical structure, the chemical process used to synthesize them, physical properties and chemical properties.

Why Plastic Recycling Is Difficult

Plastic is one of the most significant constituents of e-waste; it represents approximately 30 percent of residential e-waste by weight, according to Gary Diamond, CEO of Quantum. There are an incredible number of varieties of plastic used in products. One consumer electronics unit may contain dozens of different polymers. Unlike metals, many of which can be heated and melted down together during recycling, e-waste plastics melt at different temperatures and would contaminate one another if combined.

Plastic is one of the most difficult e-waste component to recycle because most types of plastic look the same, are generally hard to distinguish from one another with the human eye and hand. There are also many other reasons why it is hard to recycle.

• There are many plastic polymers in electronics. Since plastic polymers have low value, it is not economically viable to use a lot of labour for sorting.
• Polymer sorting requires machinery to be viable but it’s expensive and difficult for machines to sort polymers.
• It takes a lot of resources to transform recycled polymers into a usable product.
• Until last year when they stopped accepting goods for recycling, China was the principal plastics recycler for the world. Therefore, developed countries did not bother investing in their own plastics recycling systems.
• Much of the older plastics were created using brominated flame retardants, which have been recognized as damaging to health. These plastics can’t be recycled into new plastics because of the health hazard.

Sorting Shredded, Mixed and Whole Plastic

Most plastics recycling lines use four complicated, capital intensive processes: float sink, granulation, electrostatic separation and palletization. At Quantum, the shredder line accepts more than half the company’s overall volume of processed recyclables. It mechanically breaks apart products for sorting and plastics emerge from the shredder in a single stream. Unfortunately, these plastics are a mixed lot of every possible polymer.

Whole plastic from single sources such as TV’s or CRT disassembly is the easiest to handle. Because most of it is clearly labeled and still whole when segregated, it is much easier to sort than the plastic that goes through the shredder, though the danger of flame retardant-contaminated product remains.

What Is the Future for Plastics Recycling?

When China announced it was no longer accepting plastic for recycling; the rest of the world heard its wake up call. While other South East Asian countries have begun taking some of the plastic product from overseas, there is growing awareness in the developed world that we need to start handling our own waste.

According to Diamond, “We are beginning to see people in North America investing in machinery to recycle plastic. It’s going to be a very fluid market over the next few years as we figure out the best ways to deal with this situation environmentally and economically.”

We need to put our efforts into limiting plastic waste and developing fully recyclable products to deal with this growing problem. If you have any questions about plastics recycling or want to schedule a pickup, contact Quantum today.

GDPR is a term that may sound vaguely familiar. The acronym, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation, was all over the news earlier this year. In short, GDPR is a set of rules implemented by the European Union to give EU citizens more control over their personal data. Its creators have called it the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years.

The world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day, and 90 percent of all data has been produced in just the last two years. Research group IDC predicts that by 2025 the world will be creating 163 zettabytes of data a year. (A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes.) Since just about everyone today has personal data registered with banks, government institutions, healthcare providers, retailers and social media companies, GDPR has big implications for the businesses that collect, analyze and store that data—everyone from the smallest local store all the way to federal governments.

GDPR was created to ensure that organizations that are gathering data do so legally and that there are safeguards in place to protect that data once the consumer has handed it over. While developed in the EU, GDPR applies not only to organizations operating there but also to organizations elsewhere that offer goods or services to customers or businesses in the EU. This ensures a long reach that extends to major corporations no matter where they’re headquartered. With fines for non-compliance of up to 20 million Euros or four percent of annual global revenues, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for companies handling personal data.

How Does GDPR Relate to Active Servers?

GDPR obviously impacts the data stored on hard drives. For data stored on an active server, Article 15 of the GDPR guarantees that individuals can obtain their personal data from companies and discover how it’s being used. In order to respond to such subject access requests, organizations must be able to find that data on their active servers. Under Article 17, known as the “right of erasure,” an individual can request erasure of his/her personal data on one of several grounds and an organization must be able to prove that they can erase data properly and permanently.

The GDPR states that, “companies can reduce the probability of a data breach and thus reduce the risk of fines in the future, if they choose to use encryption of personal data.” Should the worst occur and there is a loss of media containing personal data that is likely to result in a risk of physical, material or non-material damages such as discrimination, identity theft, financial loss or damage to reputation, under GDPR this must be reported to the data protection authorities and would put the company in line for potential fines. As a form of risk management, having a data encryption policy in place is a win for the consumer as well as for the company.

How Does GDPR Relate to End-of-Life Drives?

Once data-bearing devices are scheduled for destruction, companies need to maintain and document a chain of custody throughout the destruction process. Working with a GDPR-compliant secure data destruction provider who can generate an audit trail for each step of data destruction is necessary to prove compliance with GDPR regulations.

Where Can I Find a GDPR-Compliant Recycler?

A GDPR-compliant secure data destruction provider such as Quantum will be fully accredited with relevant credentials such as:

• EPRA Reuse and Refurbishment Approval
• ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management System
• NAID Membership
• R2

An appropriate secure data destruction provider will also give you a Certificate of Destruction at the end of the process.

If you would rather not worry about GDPR compliance and all that it entails for your data destruction needs, contact Quantum and discuss in-house destruction with their on-site portable shredder. You’ll avoid unnecessary complications and rest easy knowing that your data destruction will be safely taken care of and the security needs of your customers are top of mind.