Why working equipment should be assessed for reuse before it's recycled, and how that decision actually gets made.
When an office retires IT equipment, it's easy to assume everything goes straight to recycling. In practice, a meaningful share of retired laptops, monitors and networking equipment is still functional — recycling that equipment recovers materials, but refurbishing and redeploying it keeps a working device in use for longer, which is a better outcome environmentally and often financially.
Equipment gets tested for basic functionality, and anything with storage goes through data destruction regardless of whether it's being reused or recycled — that step doesn't change based on the equipment's condition. What does change is the next step: working equipment is repaired where needed and prepared for resale or redeployment, while anything beyond economical repair moves to certified recycling instead.
Recycling first and asking questions later means throwing away devices that had real remaining value, and it usually isn't reversible once dismantling starts. A refurbishment-first process costs nothing extra in most cases — it's simply a sorting step before recycling begins, not a separate service you pay more for.
