A recent seminar from the EPA offered a primer for small business and local governments on how to avoid the pitfalls of e-waste recycling, but the lessons offered apply to any organization that's sitting on old electronics.

With e-waste popping up regularly in the news, and with some e-waste collections being less green than they appear, there is no shortage of reasons why companies should focus on doing right by the environment and their brands when they're looking down the barrel of a tech refresh.

The online meeting, hosted by Chris Newman from the EPA, laid out the whys and hows of selecting the right recycler for your old machines. The whys are simple: to protect your data, and your customers' data, electronics should be disposed of in a traceable and secure way. But that doesn't necessarily mean shredding up any machines that are no longer in use; responsible recyclers can wipe computers clean and reuse in part or in whole old monitors and computers.

But the key to finding the best recycler for you and the environment is the simple motto "Trust, but verify." The chart below lays out the simple steps for selecting a recycler.

Easy though it may sound, there are plenty of pitfalls on the road to responsible recycling. This is due in large part to the fact that much of the global e-waste recycling industry is located outside the United States -- something Newman attributes to a lack of facilities for processing waste domestically -- and that there are few regulations on the books for e-waste in the United States, something we've documented before.

If you're going to work with a recycler that exports e-waste abroad, you'll want to ensure that the company files the right paperwork, both at home and with the receiving country, and that that paperwork is accessible for you to review. The only electronics that ever fall under U.S. legislation are monitors and displays containing cathode ray tubes, and those can legally be exported if the receiving country approves the shipment.