What happens to your old IT equipment?
Terraguard Technologies work with businesses nationwide to collect their unwanted IT equipment and securely destroy the data on it. The hardware is then repaired, reused and redistributed, so it re-enters the economy instead of becoming waste.
IT asset disposal
We have been trained to call it waste. It isn't.
Most of the equipment we collect still works. It has simply stopped being useful to you, which is a different thing, and it is why “disposal” undersells what actually happens next.
IT asset disposal, or ITAD — sometimes called IT recycling or WEEE disposal — is three jobs in one. The kit has to leave your site legally. The data on it has to be destroyed, provably. The hardware has to go back into use, or be recycled if it genuinely cannot. Each job produces a document, and those documents are what turn “we dealt with it” into something that stands up in front of an auditor.
Here is the part most people do not expect. You do not have to choose between protecting your data and being sustainable. Done properly, one process does both.
Scope
What we take, and what else we can do
We collect
Business IT equipment and WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment), anywhere in the UK, in any quantity from a single pallet upwards.
- Laptops and desktops
- Screens and all-in-one machines
- Servers and network equipment
- Hard drives and solid state drives
- Mobile phones, tablets and desk phones
- Printers and uninterruptible power supplies
- Cabling, docking stations and peripherals
We can also help with
The jobs that usually arrive attached to a disposal, so you are not left chasing a second supplier for each one.
- Decommissioning. Data centre and office decommissioning, multi-site clearances and office relocations, planned around your dates rather than ours
- Repair and life extension. Not everything that has stopped being useful needs to leave. Where a machine still has working life in it, we can repair and test it and give it back to you, so it stays in service instead of being replaced
- Buying refurbished. A refurbished machine costs less than the new equivalent, and keeping a working device in use rather than replacing it is the single largest environmental saving in this whole process. If you are looking to buy rather than to clear, tell us what you need and we will tell you what we have
- Brokering. Where a load holds real resale value, that value can come back to you rather than simply funding the collection
How it runs
How a collection actually runs
Four stages, a document at the end of each, and nothing that needs you to understand our industry to follow it.
Collection
We come to you in our own vehicles, with a minimum of two security vetted staff. Every vehicle is tracked and fitted with cameras, so the chain of custody holds from your door to our processing site. Enhanced DBS checks are standard for operational staff, and further checks can be arranged where your site requires them.
Collection and transport are never subcontracted, so the people who arrive work for us. Equipment is unloaded on return into our own alarmed, CCTV monitored facility, which has no public access.
You receive
A Waste Transfer Note, signed by both parties before the van leaves.On the day
Audit and reporting
Every item is booked in and audited individually, as its own asset. Nothing is counted into a total.
Against each item we record the serial number, or the asset tag we assign where there is not one. Condition is tested and recorded: power, battery, screen, cosmetic state, drive health. For anything holding data, the erasure method used and the result it returned. That is the level of detail your own asset register has to reconcile against.
It is also the level compliance asks for. Under UK GDPR you have to be able to demonstrate that data was disposed of properly, not simply say that it was. A record per item, with a method against every drive, is what turns that from an assertion into evidence. An auditor picks one item, follows it from the enquiry to the point it left us, and the numbers agree at every step.
You receive
An itemised Asset Inventory Sheet, to reconcile against your own asset register.Within 21 working days
Data destruction
Every drive is erased in line with current guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre. Healthy drives are erased and the hardware is reused. Your data never leaves in a readable state.
Any drive that fails erasure is physically destroyed at our own site rather than passed on, and so is any drive where you would rather have destruction than a wipe. The components are then recycled separately.
You receive
A Certificate of Data Destruction, with a manifest listing every device by serial number.Within 28 working days
Repair, reuse and redistribution
Equipment is repaired and refurbished wherever repair is possible, because a working machine is worth more than its parts and lasts longer than a recycled one. What comes out of that goes on to trade, direct to other businesses, and to charities and community groups.
Reusing one laptop rather than replacing it avoids 138kg of CO2, taken from our own calculator. Keeping equipment in use is the single largest environmental effect in this whole process. We reuse and repurpose as much as possible, and recycle what is left.
You receive
A Certificate of Carbon Reduction, calculated from your itemised list rather than an estimate.On request
Case studies
What the difficult jobs actually looked like
Client names are anonymised. The detail is not.
Public sector
Dual-location IT disposal for the public sector
An office closing at short notice, with equipment across two locations and a fixed handback date.
Read the case study
Multi-site
Nationwide technology refresh across multiple sites
Equipment replaced on a rolling schedule, with asset tracking kept intact throughout.
Read the case study
Data security
The data sanitisation experiment
We sent wiped drives to data recovery specialists and asked them to break it.
Read what happenedFree instant estimate
What would reusing your own kit save?
No obligation. Add what you're disposing of and we'll give you a figure.
Prefer the full breakdown and a downloadable report? Use the full calculator
What you receive
The four documents, and what each one proves
The data on the equipment remains yours until we collect it, and becomes ours from the point of collection.
Open any one to see what it proves
Waste Transfer Note
On the day of collection
That the equipment left your site legally, into the hands of a registered waste carrier. This is the duty of care record, and the one an environmental inspector asks for.
Asset Inventory Sheet
Within 21 working days
Exactly what we took, item by item. This is what you reconcile your own asset register against, and what tells you nothing went missing.
Certificate of Data Destruction
Within 28 working days
That the data is gone, with a manifest listing every device by serial number. This is your record of processing, and the document you would show your own auditor or the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Certificate of Carbon Reduction
On request
The carbon saved by reusing rather than replacing, calculated from the actual itemised list rather than an estimate. Useful for your own environmental reporting.
Certifications and licences
What we are certified to, and what each one means for you
Explained rather than stacked as logos. Every number below can be checked against the public register.
- ISO 27001
- Information security. Our handling of your data is independently audited, not just promised in a brochure. If you only check one, check this one.
- ISO 14001
- Environmental management. It is why we can evidence where your equipment actually ended up.
- ISO 9001
- Quality management. The process we show you is the process you get, every collection.
- Waste Carrier LicenceCBDU609517
- Registered upper tier. We are licensed to carry waste, which is what makes your Waste Transfer Note worth having.
- S2 ExemptionWEX473365
- Our own site is permitted to store and treat what we collect, so your kit is not passed down a chain you cannot see.
- T11 ExemptionEPWEEE/T11/EXP/QS3295UJ/2026
- Covers treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment at our own site. An address update is in progress with the Environment Agency, so a new reference is expected in due course.
- ICO RegistrationZB940758
- Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator.
All three ISO standards are certified through Citation. We send the certificates themselves on request rather than paraphrasing their scope.
Winner, Excellence in Sustainability
Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2026. The category recognises businesses that can show green practices driving commercial growth rather than holding it back.
What it costs
Usually nothing. Here is why.
We make our money by repairing equipment and selling it on. That is what pays for the collection, the erasure and the paperwork, which is why disposal and data wiping are typically free.
Every collection is costed individually, because every load is different. We will not put a figure on yours before we have seen it, because a wrong number is worse than no number.
Where we go
Based in Wiltshire, collecting nationwide
Our facility is in Aldbourne, on the Wiltshire and Berkshire border. We collect across the United Kingdom, and in practice most of our work runs along the M4 between Bristol and London, simply because that is where we are.
Distance is not usually the deciding factor. Volume is. A small collection a long way away may not be viable on its own, but it often is if we can combine it with something else, so it is always worth asking.
Before you book
Questions we get asked
Do you destroy data at our premises?
Are your vehicles and collection staff secure?
How much of our equipment gets reused rather than recycled?
Do you work with MSPs and IT resellers?
Is there anything we need to do before you collect?
Can we include staff personal devices in a collection?
How long have you been doing this?
Tell us what you have and where it is
No obligation. If we are not the right fit we will say so.