Tech Recycling Days
When it comes to making the most efficient use of our resources, UMass Boston IT doesn’t just talk the talk. IT walks the walk. So, when UMass Boston’s IT Services Division assumed responsibility for “Computer Lifecycle Management” of university-owned computers on July 1, 2023, it had to create an entirely new and much more efficient computer lifecycle process. “The university as a whole was changing how we manage our inventory of computers, all the way from planning and purchasing through to end of usefulness,” Assistant Vice Chancellor of Client Services John Mazzarella explained. “So, we had to write up a computer lifecycle policy describing how the process would be handled.”
Additionally, the IT Services Division had to develop a university-wide system for recycling and replacing computers for every office and department at UMass Boston, and it was far from easy. Creating a centralized, streamlined method for the acquisition of new computers at the university may have been the simpler part of this project, however, the other half of the equation still needed to be figured out, and this was getting employees to turn in their outdated computers. John Mazzarella and his team assessed the issue and quickly went to work.
To start, John researched the issue in-depth and wrote a Computer Lifecycle Update Report. He determined that many university-issued computers on campus were nearing the end of their viable lifespan and needed to be placed in surplus, or, in other words, recycled. But as you can imagine, recycling laptops and other computer equipment is not as easy as recycling bottles and cans. The most obvious problem the team faced is the very large number of computers to be managed, especially coming from every department in the university. John realized that eventually the employees with these older computers would need to be directly contacted to turn them in, but that was too big a project to accomplish in the short term. A plan to allow old computers to be quickly and voluntarily turned in to IT was needed, and that’s when Tech Recycling Days was born.
Starting around Earth Day (which lent an environmental theme to the proceedings), an eight-week schedule was devised in which every Wednesday IT staff would man a table and collect outdated computers from employees. Each week the event would be held in one of the eight main university buildings to give it as much coverage as possible. The IT staff didn’t know what to expect but were surprised by the result. “It was just like all day, people coming by and dropping off laptops or coming up with a big cart full of stuff. Some departments that had about 30 computers that had been sitting around for ten years came by and we would just scan (their barcodes to process returning) and that would be it,” John said. At the end of the eight weeks, a total of 792 computers were returned to IT. As expected, 701 of them were old and non-viable computers, which was 11% of the total number of non-viable computers in IT’s inventory, including several computers over 20 years old!
There was another pleasant surprise in store for IT staff. “We were pleased to find that a significant number of turned-in computers were still viable. These are computers that are new enough to be compatible with currently supported operating systems and are still very usable by employees. We received a total of 91 viable computers and IT staff are hard at work refurbishing them to make them ready for redeployment to those in need,” John said.
Tech Recycling Days proved to be a smashing success for John Mazzarella and his team and is another example of IT going the extra mile to ensure efficient use of UMass Boston resources.