As one of Australia's largest companies, Westpac Banking Corporation faces a very practical technological problem: what to do with the thousands of PCs that reach the end of their three-year lifecycle every year.
Westpac's solution has been to send these systems, of which there are between 8,000 and 12,000 annually, to charity group WorkVentures. One of several organisations in Australia set up to receive and revive outdated IT inventories, WorkVentures employs nine people in its Mascot, New South Wales, facility. There, systems from Westpac and several other corporate partners are stripped to parts, then reassembled into refurbished units that are on-sold to the general public at around $299 (£163) each including an Internet starter kit, modem, and other equipment.
WorkVentures chief executive Steve Lawrence has big plans for the programme, which is selling around 400 PCs a month and is expanding nationwide through partnerships with similar organisations in rural areas and other capital cities. Lawrence's goal is to eventually employ 100 people who process 40,000 PCs nationwide every year, building up a sustainable operational model as well as helping its workforce -- largely people who were previously unemployed -- develop marketable skills.
There's not much margin in the computer refurbishment business; after all, IT equipment that's written off after a typical three-year usage cycle has no paper value and may well be all but worthless on the open market.
"If companies were replacing their equipment every two years they'd probably get a good return [by selling it into the market]," Lawrence says. "But if they're holding off for three or four years, [the residual value of] their equipment doesn't really cover the whole cost of the decommissioning process. By the time you've paid for transport and the cost of the disposal system you may use, there's often not much change left."
In May, the challenge of maintaining a financially viable computer recycling operation hit the Dell Recycling Program, a Dell-backed initiative that was launched in June 2003 and recycled 17 tonnes of computer equipment in its first six months. But Dell's partner in the venture, HMR Australia, went into receivership in May. Dell expects the program to be up and running with a new supplier within weeks, but HMR's failure highlights the economic difficulties that accompany the model.
