A few months ago I wrote about TechTurn, an IT asset recovery company based in Austin, Texas. Last week I had an opportunity to tour the Austin facility, and I now see how TechTurn goes way beyond asset recovery and into the realm of IT sustainability. My host for the day, TechTurn COO Vito Fabiano, said that a tour of the plant is his biggest sales tool, and I can see why. By the time I saw how old computing equipment is processed and prepared for reuse, I was thoroughly impressed.

The premise behind TechTurn’s business is IT sustainability - reusing technology that might otherwise end up in a landfill, and finding additional value from that technology. It goes beyond simple recycling of the component parts of a computer. The best way I can explain this is to take you on a virtual tour of the plant.

The process usually starts with a company doing a technology refresh. Out with the old and in with the new often means that hundreds or thousands of computers are taken out of service at once. The company makes an agreement with TechTurn to take those old devices – desktops, laptops, PDAs, storage units, servers, monitors, projectors, etc. – and process them in a way that will return as much value as possible to the company. Before the equipment ever leaves the company’s dock, TechTurn already has a good record of what it is going to receive and what to do with the equipment. TechTurn arranges the secure logistics for transporting the equipment (on pallets) to one of its processing centers in the U.S. and Europe. (TechTurn has near-term plans to expand its service coverage to emerging markets, too.)

When the pallets arrive at the processing plant, every asset is identified with an individual asset tag and the lot number of the pallet. The assets are anonymized so that TechTurn workers can’t identify the organization the equipment came from. This is just one of many security measures TechTurn takes throughout the process to ensure maximum security of every asset and the data it may hold. At the end of the tagging step, TechTurn has a very detailed serialized inventory of everything it received in the lot.

Now it’s on to the triage step. Devices are separated by type – monitors over here, laptops over there – and they are given a quick evaluation to determine if they potentially can be rebuilt or if they should simply be broken down into components and recycled. For example, a monitor with a cracked screen might head to recycling; a laptop that appears to be in good shape physically will be further evaluated to see if it can be used again. Triage is performed by people, but once this step is done, plant automation takes over. The automation is a key factor in TechTurn’s success.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.