Regulations regarding e-waste disposal have also passed in several states, including California, Washington, Maine, and Maryland, and more are in the works in Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Hand in hand with environmental concerns of e-waste disposal are security and privacy issues. "When we got into this business, companies were spending thousands of dollars on firewalls but giving away their PCs," saysIntechra CEO Chip Slack.

Several federal and state regulations now make it the corporate user's responsibility to protect the privacy of customer data at every stage, including during the disposal process. Laws in more than 20 states mandate that all the affected clients and consumers must be notified if any customer information gets outside of the custody or control of a company. Along with proper environmental disposal of systems, many companies, particularly in the financial and health fields, now have to prove that all sensitive customer or patient data is eradicated according to strict state and federal requirements.

What goes around, comes around

Asset recovery providers range in the U.S. from the principal system vendors — including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, and Sun -- to scores of local specialty providers, to an emerging class of regional, national, and global providers, such as Redemtech, Intechra, TechTurn, and NextPhase.

The latter have been on a buying binge, acquiring local providers to expand their reach. In many cases the major system vendors partner with various local and regional providers to broaden their reach as well, as one of the most expensive parts of the disposal process is transport. For example, Leduc claims that Union Bank's recovery costs were reduced by 25 percent when Intechra opened a facility in Phoenix and PCs no longer had to be shipped from California to Columbus.

The services provided by the hardware vendors differ in subtle ways. IBM and HP run their asset-recovery services as part of their leasing and financing operations. Indeed, leasing can be a good solution for companies that want as little as possible to do with asset recovery, as it places responsibility for environmentally sound disposal with the vendor rather than the lessor, though the lessor retains responsibility for protecting user data. Both vendors can build asset recovery into the leasing cost. Dell's asset recovery services are part of its managed services offering.

HP and IBM will take non-leased equipment and equipment purchased from other vendors, though in HP's case, only as part of an upgrade to the company's hardware. HP will apply what it considers the trade-in value of third-party equipment toward a new hardware purchase. Dell takes third-party equipment as well and will either cut a check for the value or apply the value to a new purchase. Sun takes only its own equipment and does so free of charge, with no value applied to a purchase.

Contract arrangements also vary. Most of the vendors work on fee-for-service as well as long-term-contract bases. In some cases, such as with IBM Global Services, disposal can be part of a more comprehensive asset-management offering that helps the customer take inventory and determine appropriate refresh strategies.

Vendors then attempt to reap whatever commercial value they can out of the PCs they collect, either by refurbishing and selling them or disassembling them and selling the parts, sometimes through a broker. All will enter into a profit-sharing arrangement with the customer. Dell boasts that 90 percent of the sales profits go to the customer. Intechra gives a 60 percent figure. Other vendors are not so public about their sharing ratio.

Obviously, PCs that are refreshed on a regular two-, three-, or even four-year schedule and immediately sent to the vendor are more likely to get some return than PCs are that five years old or more, or those that sit in a corporate warehouse for months or years first. All the vendors claim that they do not ship equipment, either PCs or parts, overseas unless they can verify that it is in working and saleable condition. The younger the PCs, the higher the possibility that recovery will end up being no cost after profit sharing or might even result in an overall return for the customer.