Media and Device Disposal and Reuse Procedures

These implementation procedures provide a partial list of references for erasing, obscuring or destroying some commonly used media and devices. If the media or device is not listed, please contact the IT staff in your unit. In other circumstances, please check with SWAP regarding disposal of surplus university property.

First – Be sure to retain university records

When disposing or reusing items that may contain university records, be careful to follow the approved records retention schedules. This may require making a copy of certain information before erasing or destroying media or devices. Please see: http://www.library.wisc.edu/archives/records-management/training/ as a starting point.

Disposal of surplus university property (via SWAP)

Disposal of most surplus property is handled by SWAP (Surplus with a Purpose.) Please see their web site at https://swap.wisc.edu/, for a list of items that SWAP will or will not accept.

The UW-Madison Business Services policy for disposal of surplus university property states that, "Purchasing Services has the SOLE authority for disposal of surplus and abandoned property at UW-Madison..."

Please see https://swap.wisc.edu/policy-procedures/ for the policy, and the procedures for how to dispose of different kinds of surplus property.

Computer hard drives

SWAP has hard drive disposal services available for university-owned equipment. See https://swap.wisc.edu/material-acceptance-guidelines-2/.

When reusing a hard drive, or as an extra precaution when disposing of equipment, the DoIT Knowledge Base (KB) has articles on securely erasing Windows and Mac OS hard drives.

For disposing of personally owned devices and media, there is also information available on the Personal Computer Recycling Program.

See: https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/search.php?q=disposal for options.

Paper and other soft media

Paper and a variety of other soft media should be shredded.

Caution: Before shredding anything other than paper, please check the limitations of the shredder.

Contact

Please address questions or comments to itpolicy@cio.wisc.edu.