The secondary market reduces e-waste, increases the useful life of equipment and stretches budgets. From the IT manufacturers’ perspective, the push to “go green” is good for business, considering advances in technology means replacing network equipment. Manufacturers are producing a plethora of power-saving products, encouraging customers to buy new hardware, even whether existing equipment still works, in order to save money in energy costs, which does not seem like an Earth-friendly definition of green whether you consider what happens to most end-of-life products.

The rapid obsolescence of network and telecommunications equipment is the biggest contributor to the growing supply of electronic waste (e-waste). The life span of today’s IT equipment is growing increasingly shorter as manufacturers offer — and customers buy — new equipment to take advantage of the latest innovations, retiring tons of still-functioning gear.

“With e-waste being the fastest growing of all waste segments, it is critical we do everything possible to keep electronic waste

out of the landfills,” says Chip Slack, CEO of Intechra, an electronics recycling company. Most IT equipment retains value and utility far longer than the manufacturer-determined life cycle, so decommissioned assets need not end up in the landfill or recycling bin.

“Reuse can play a crucial part in solving the disposal challenge. It’s always better to reuse and extend the life of equipment than to recycle and have to manufacture new equipment,” Slack says.

“Manufacturers are moving much quicker than the needs of many customers,” says Frank Kobuszewski, vice president of technology solutions at CXtec, provider of new and preowned networking, voice and cabling equipment.

There is an expanding market for used networking and telecommunications equipment, Kobuszewski says. “Equipment that is obsolete for one customer is not necessarily obsolete for others.”

A growing number of electronic equipment resellers buy, sell or trade preowned networking gear, creating a viable secondary…

Original post by dhiram