The word is GREEN

[W1nTry]

I wonder if anyone can make a sucessful wide scale copy of this model in T&T?

Old PCs find new homes in re-use venture

The greening of Terry Maguire

By Paul Hales: Wednesday 28 February 2007, 16:23
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HOW MANY PERSONAL COMPUTERS have been built and sold so far? How many of them are still in use? How many have been dumped in landfill sites or exported and dumped in China?

No, we don't know either. Millions, that's for sure.

But with the realisation that the world's resources won't last for ever and that man over the past 100 years has pretty well trashed the globe he inhabits, even chip makers have begun flaunting their green credentials. Well, when it suits them.

And as manufacturers and sellers of electronic kit know, the regulators are after them and want them to clean up after themselves.

The UK government has finally published is guide to complying with the EU Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). The 80-page document has appeared in a pdf here. These obligations on "producers" of electronic goods will make startling reading for some companies. And, while there has been plenty of wrangling over the proposals, the onus on the producers of the kit to ensure it is cleaned up and disposed of properly is generally seen as a good thing by consumers.

[Terry and his refurbed PCs.]

One man rubbing his hands at the prospect of the WEEE directive coming into full force is Terry Maguire. Terry runs Computer Remarketing Services Limited (CRS) of Milton Keynes. The firm collects used computer kit from firms stumped at what to do with redundant PCs after they've upgraded. The kit is spruced up and shipped out to new homes across the country.

Maguire reckons some eighty per cent of the kit coming through his doors is put back into use. His clients want a secure and legal way of disposing of their kit, says Terry and if his customers like to be doing a bit towards a green lifestyle the main bonus of refurbished kit, he says, is that it is cheap.

CRS employs around ten people at its Milton Keynes warehouse. Naturally, the size of the workforce fluctuates, but the firm has been going in various forms since 2001. Maguire got involved when he was charged with flogging off whatever physical assets his previous firm Commodore had left in the UK when it as finally wound up.

"I found this secondary market. I'm not claiming ten years of forethought," Terry told the INQUIRER, "but I could see it was a market that wasn't going to go away."

He says the green consciousness seemed to have taken hold over the past five years. "It takes 1500kg of raw material to build a PC," he says. "You can't just stick that in a skip."

[Where there's muck, there's brass.]

CRS takes care of all the paperwork for the machines on behalf of both seller and buyer. Naturally, any hard disks are written over to the Government approved standard and "total traceability" is maintained for each PC, says Terry.

PCs are delivered to customers with a 90-day warranty and a 14-day money back guarantee - "Just in case it doesn't go with the curtains."

Businesses that just want to kit out staff to run Word and maybe get on the web are among Terry's customers, he says. Others offer their employees the machines through staff purchase schemes, after Terry and his boys have spruced them up. Those that have a valid Windows licence will have it reinstalled. "There can't be anything wrong with that, can there?" Maguire argues.

Indeed while producers of electronic gear may get it in the neck from WEEE, Terry reckons Microsoft may worm out of it. And Vista's licensing looks like a headache for re-users and recyclers. "Microsoft needs to put something back into the system. They need to talk to people like us. They could be help out rather than getting in the way."

Terry will flog you a second-hand PC if you ask him. We'll have a look at one of his offerings shortly to see how it shapes up. µ