July 2004

Chicago Public Schools Turn Focus on Recycling Outdated Technology Responsibly

Chicago, IL— Dell will recycle more than 18,000 pieces of old computer equipment this year for Chicago Public Schools. Dell president and chief operating officer Kevin Rollins and chief information officer Robert Runcie announced the new asset recovery program at Stockton Elementary School in Chicago.

Dell Services will manage the entire recycling process for the District’s 600 school buildings this year, including gathering, packaging and transporting the systems. Dell will also overwrite the hard disks to help protect the data, and the systems will be recycled to specifications set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. This project will free up classroom space for learning rather than storing old computers.

“Since 1995, Chicago Public Schools has invested heavily in computer infrastructure, equipment and professional development to ensure that our teachers and students have access to technology,” Runcie said. “However, we did not have a good strategy for computer asset disposal, which resulted in a number of challenges, including obsolete equipment occupying precious real estate in some schools; environmental risk if schools didn’t dispose of equipment properly; and data security risk if hard drives containing student information weren’t overwritten in the disposal process.”

Dell recently began the recycling process by removing 410 old computers from Kelly High School, the largest high school in the district.