Examining the Industry's Scat

Like a biologist picking through owl pellets, the best way to figure out what’s going on with an entity is to examine its leavings. That’s why I try to go to the ACCRC at least once a week. The Alameda County Computer Resource Center is a non-profit computer and electronics recycler in Berkeley, Calif. There, they reformat old desktops, install Ubuntu and then donate the machine to someone in need. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that my wife works there, too.

My weekly visits to this den of IT leavings has taught me a few things about the current state of enterprise IT. First, I’ve learned that cathode ray tube monitors are finally becoming the exception, rather than the rule. For a long time, these beasts would make up the mainstay of donations, but recently they’ve become somewhat less common. Old CRT televisions and CCTV monitors, however, are still plentiful in the wild.

Laptops have become so prevalent that they are frequently appearing without any molestation. In the past, laptops donated for recycling have typically been stripped of RAM, hard drives and often their screens. But these days, most laptops arrive fully intact, a sign that the precious pieces inside are no longer at a premium.

DLT tapes are also a common sight at the center. It would appear that they have become somewhat passe in enterprise backup systems. There is irony to be had here, however: despite the wealth of backup media donated, actual hard drive and RAID case donations are way down. It would appear that the need for cold backups isn’t as great as the need for online systems with warmer storage. All data, accessible all the time, in other words.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from my visits to the ACCRC, however, is the lesson of waste. It never ceases to amaze me how much equipment arrives in its original packaging, unopened, unused and unneeded. If I was able to track these items back to their origins (something that is next to impossible at this massive warehouse), I bet I’d find someone who was either fired, a newbie or was looking for another job behind these donations. I like to think that the experienced and caring managers and buyers out there tend to purchase only what they’ll need. Whereas the less experienced tend to buy in round numbers with huge smudge factors. Honestly, there’s never going to be a need for 10,000 individually wrapped 3-foot ethernet cables in any enterprise. There will always be a need for 30,000-foot spools of cable, however, which can easily be cut into any size or length needed.

Unless you want to feed the ACCRC more fresh gear, I’d recommend calculating and re-calculating your buying numbers when purchasing equipment. Remember, like a salad bar, you can always go back and fill your cup again when you’ve finished what you’ve got. But you can never put the cottage cheese back in the tub if you don’t finish it.
--Alex Handy