askST: I forgot to wipe my data before recycling my device. Is my data safe? | The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – Electronic devices – from the smartphone in your pocket to the laptop you use daily at work – contain metals and plastic that can be recovered when a device becomes obsolete.

Singapore generates an estimated 60,000 tonnes of e-waste each year. To boost recycling rates, the Republic introduced an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme in 2021.

This initiative holds producers of certain electrical and electronic equipment responsible for ensuring the proper collection and treatment of products at the end of a device or appliance’s life.

These include items such as laptops, mobile phones, modems, routers, set-top boxes and TV sets.

Across the island, there are now more than 800 collection points for e-waste.

But only 22,300 tonnes of regulated consumer e-waste have been collected since the scheme’s inception.

To allay consumer concerns about data privacy during e-waste recycling, members of the media were hosted to a tour at e-waste recycling firm MeTech Recycling for an in-depth look into how data from sensitive devices is destroyed as part of the process.

Items are gathered by waste management firm Alba Group, the only operator licensed under the EPR scheme to collect regulated consumer e-waste.

After collection, the e-waste is sent to Alba’s logistics hub for sorting and weighing. The items are then sent to other local e-waste recyclers.

Devices that can hold sensitive data are sent to recyclers with data sanitisation capabilities. Data sanitisation is the process of permanently and irreversibly destroying data from storage devices.

One such company is MeTech Recycling.

Every day, shipments of e-waste from Alba are sent to MeTech Recycling, with each shipment weighing up to 2,100kg.

After weighing the e-waste again for verification purposes, data-storing devices are sent to a secure room.

Only selected employees have access to the room, and alarms are sounded every time someone enters, said MeTech Recycling sustainability and recycling consultant Vincent Quck.

Cameras are also installed in the room for monitoring.

Demonstrating what happens to laptops going through the data sanitisation process, Mr Quck said that staff will dismantle the devices and remove the data-containing components like the hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs).

HDDs are then put through a degausser, a machine that disrupts the magnetic fields used to encode data on hard drives, rendering the information unreadable and unrecoverable.

“This process cannot be reversed. Degaussing also removes the start-up files for the hard disks, so they cannot be rebooted or reused again. They are essentially brain-dead,” said Mr Quck.

The degaussed HDDs are then crushed and further broken down into their various components like metal, plastic and printed circuit boards, which contain small amounts of precious metals. These components will be sent to other downstream recycling partners.

Because SSDs do not store data magnetically, they are shredded instead. This will render any data destroyed beyond hope of recovery.

People should back up their data to an external drive before recycling their e-waste, said Mr Quck.

Next, they should do a factory reset on their devices.

“You also need to do your part as a consumer, so you feel reassured that the data has been erased. What we do at MeTech Recycling are added steps to ensure all the data is removed,” said Mr Quck.

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