Find the lawful disposal route for five items, and read one safety data sheet

short · 35 min · Objective 4.2

Task

Establish the actual disposal route for five items you own or will own, find and read one safety data sheet, and assess your own power protection. Every answer is specific to where you live, which is what makes it worth doing rather than reading.

Steps

  1. Write lab/disposal/routes.csv with header item,hazard,lawful_route,where_locally,evidence_required covering a battery, a toner or ink cartridge, a display, a whole computer and a storage device.
  2. Find and read one safety data sheet for something you own -- toner, a cleaning solvent, a compressed air duster -- and record in lab/disposal/sds.md where you found it, what its disposal section says, and what its first aid section says.
  3. Write lab/disposal/sanitisation.csv with header method,works_on,does_not_work_on,evidence_produced covering deleting, quick format, overwriting, cryptographic erasure, the drive's own secure erase, degaussing and physical destruction.
  4. Assess your own power protection in lab/disposal/power.csv with header equipment,protection,covers,does_not_cover.
  5. Record the environment in lab/disposal/environment.csv with header factor,value_or_state,effect,action covering temperature, humidity, dust and ventilation where your equipment lives.

Verify

awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=5 {n++} END {print n" disposal route(s)"}' lab/disposal/routes.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && $4=="" {n++} END {print n" route(s) with no local answer"}' lab/disposal/routes.csv
grep -Eic 'disposal|first aid' lab/disposal/sds.md
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" sanitisation method(s)"}' lab/disposal/sanitisation.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && $3 ~ /solid|ssd|flash/ {n++} END {print n" method(s) noted as failing on solid-state media"}' lab/disposal/sanitisation.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" power assessment(s)"}' lab/disposal/power.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" environmental factor(s)"}' lab/disposal/environment.csv

Five routes each with a local answer, six sanitisation methods with at least one noted as failing on solid-state media, and four environmental factors. A route with no local answer is the thing to go and find before you need it.

Notes

Degaussing on a solid-state drive is the trap worth having written down: it destroys a magnetic field, and there is no magnetic field to destroy.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA A+ Core 2 220-1202 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.