This is correct. Once upon a time, I worked for a company doing this type of disposal. They had 18 wheelers full of equipment show up a couple of times per week. Drives were pulled and put in a pile to be shredded. Everything else was tested and either restored to working order and sold in bulk to organizations in need of cheaper computers, parted out on eBay, or scrapped.
Everything else was tested and either restored to working order and sold in bulk to organizations in need of cheaper computers, parted out on eBay, or scrapped.
Happy to say that my company shreds its old hard drives, then puts new ones in the old laptops and desktops and spruces them up for reuse.
We team up with a local organization to give them to poor children and families each Christmas. IT always sends around a bunch of photos afterward of kids who don't always know where they'll sleep from night to night clinging to a used computer like it's a life ring and they're in the middle of the ocean. I've been told that for some of them, it's the only present they'll receive the entire year.
We don't qualify for a tax break or any other renumeration for this. We do it because it's a nice thing to do.
(I have no idea what happens to servers. Not my department.)
