The FISMA Focus IPD

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But the unloading, smashing, and shredding of e-waste is only half the operation here. To get to the facility’s data security wing, you have to go through a metal detector and get past an eagle-eyed security guard. Here, neat stacks of laptops sit on top of wooden pallets, while a team of middle-aged men wielding power tools quietly disassemble each one, wipe the hard drives, and send them to the mini-shredder that sits in a cage in the corner.

This is where Corporate America — financial service firms, medical groups, insurance companies, basically anyone with industrial secrets they want to protect — sends its leftover electronics to be scrubbed of data, refurbished, resold, or completely recycled. Thirty-plus security cameras cover the area, known at ERI as the “asset management” wing. No one without special clearance is allowed in. All the electronics going in have to match the weight of material that comes out, down to the milligram. “Sounds like overkill,” says Scott Townsend, director of recycling solutions. “But we’re not willing to take that chance.”