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By Julian Goldsmith, 3 February 1999 17:34

NEWS ICL has developed an IT recycling service in collaboration with retailer, Marks & Spencer (M&S), as a response to an EU directive on the disposal of electronic equipment. M&S says it now saves £3 in recovered equipment value for every £1 spent on the ICL recycling service. According to the UK services company, only 24 per cent of Europe's obsolete IT equipment is collected. This figure is likely to change as the EU toughens its stance on dumping harmful substances such as lead, cadmium and phosphorous into landfill sites. ICL is now marketing the service now to the rest of its outsourcing clients, using the example of M&S as a benchmark. M&S has had an outsourcing contract with ICL since 1985 and has worked with the company to develop a service which manages the company's recycling alongside its other IT services, from a central site. This enables ICL to recondition old equipment for other uses or break it up for cannibalising components. ICL also has a network of substance recovery specialists, so valuable elements can be recovered from unusable components. M&S donates a large number of recovered equipment to charities as a goodwill gesture, but claims that 75 per cent of recycled IT hardware goes back into the organisation.