A Magnetic Shift in ITAD: Rethinking Sustainable Data Destruction

Sims Lifecycle Services

July 2, 2025

Global enterprise and hyperscale clients demand secure, certified, and verifiable data destruction – this is non-negotiable in today’s IT asset disposition (ITAD) landscape. Various methods of data destruction provide complete and irreversible sanitization, though the sustainability benefits vary with each. The most common method, shredding, physically destroys storage devices but eliminates any potential for reuse or component recovery, making it the least sustainable option. Data erasure, on the other hand, allows for secure sanitization while enabling equipment to be reused, offering the highest environmental benefit. An emerging third option, magnet recovery, provides a hybrid approach, ensuring data is destroyed while allowing rare earth elements from hard drives to be reclaimed, helping organizations meet both their security and sustainability goals.

Read the article here: https://www.simslifecycle.com/blog/2025/hard-drive-circularity/