Concerned about green disposal of electronic waste, the Environmental Club, college eco reps, and IT ambassadors met in mid-October to brainstorm ideas on how to merge student e-waste recycling with Rice’s computer hardware disposal process. The hardware that IT and Facilities Engineering and Planning (FE&P) manage through their disposal process is any equipment containing memory or data.

Currently, Rice faculty and staff contact the IT Help Desk and an IT support staff member arranges pick up for their e-waste.  The equipment is wiped clean to ensure no Rice data remains, then the hardware is shipped to a central location where it is sorted for sale (on Rice Classifieds), recycling, or salvage.  Vendors pick up pallets of the sorted hardware for appropriate disposal.

The Environmental Club and eco reps plan to hold a student e-waste drive in the future.  Although IT Ambassadors are not allowed to take delivery of e-waste,  they will help promote the event via email, college meetings, and Facebook.  Carlyn Chatfield, Manager for IT Technical Communications, supervises the IT Ambassadors and explained the restriction.  “IT student workers are not allowed to accept delivery of university or personal technology devices except inside the IT Help Desk, where a release form is completed and the equipment is secured while it is being backed up or diagnosed for problems.”

Stay tuned; your college eco rep, the Environmental Club, or your IT Ambassador will be making announcements soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2014 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.