SaaSy Software Leads to Better e-Waste Recycling
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 12.10.08
Back in June, Webroot launched a product called Security Software as a Service (SaaS) which provides a great threat protection service that makes hardware solutions obsolete.
Switching to software solutions instead of hardware is great since it means less security hardware needs to be produced. But what about all the hardware that is now out of a job? As so often happens, when something new comes along, a bunch of e-waste is generated.
Thankfully, green-thinking Webroot fixed that problem as well.
Webroot has come up with the Go Green recycling program to help properly recycle obsolete hardware.
"When we realized that the tremendous success of security SaaS solutions would be making hardware-based security obsolete, we took steps to provide a socially responsible alternative for recycling this influx of electronic waste," Webroot CEO Peter Watkins said Monday in a statement announcing the recycling program rollout.
To create the program, Webroot partnered with Guaranteed Recycling Xperts (GRX), an electronics recycler in the US, and Centillion, an electronics recycler in Europe and Asia. By pairing up with these organizations, as well as signing the Basel Action Network’s Pledge of True Stewardship, Webroot is ensuring that their collection and recycling of obsolete hardware is done in an ethical and efficient manner.
Big props to a company doing the right thing – efficiently and ethically getting rid of electronic hardware from both the production and recycling ends.
More on Quality e-Waste Programs:
Waste Management Pledges Better Recycling Practices
e-Stewards Announces Big News for e-Waste Recyclers
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Great to see sassy recycling solutions from SaaS - isn't it great when companies go the whole nine yards to provide complete solutions!
I think that "obsolete hardware" needs to be qualified further. What hardware did they make obsolete? Were they routers, or servers?
The company I work for (an Internet provider) does a great deal of "recycling" by buying used server hardware. We find that server hardware that used to be high end and worth tens of thousands of dollars, now sells on ebay for a grand or two. And server hardware is much more reliable than the consumer grade stuff we could be buying off the shelf for even less. Couple that with the fact that if said hardware survives a lengthy burn-in period (say, two years or more), the likelihood that it will survive for many years more is very high. We've had computers running 24/7 for 10 years straight, outliving their obsolescence (and probably their Maximum Time Before Failure) by about 6-8 years. Some hardware simply refuses to die.
Smart operators can do the same with router hardware too (which don't use hard drives, and as such isn't anywhere near as flexible in the software they can use) by repurposing it after its useful lifetime has expired. Before it ends up in a landfill (or being recycled), it may live out its final days as the office's internet gateway, although that might be a bit of an extreme measure, since using a 16U Cisco router for such a job when an off-the-shelf $79.95 Best buy special could do it much easier, is kind of overkill.