Seagate teams up with eBay

Seagate Technology has announced its sustainability collaboration with e-commerce site eBay. The agreement establishes Seagate’s official storefront on eBay as a direct channel for consumers to access factory-recertified hard drives as part of the Seagate Circularity Program.

As a founding member of the Circular Drive Initiative—a partnership of global leaders in digital storage, data centers, sustainability, and blockchain collaborating to reduce e-waste—Seagate is committed to enabling the secure reuse of storage devices and reducing hard drive shredding. Hard drive shredding entails breaking down a hard drive into tiny pieces so that data cannot be recovered. As rare earth materials contained in those parts cannot be reused, hard drive shredding harms the environment and is not a sustainable practice.

Since data control remains the biggest obstacle to embracing hard drive circularity, Seagate brings a trusted level of data sanitization and comprehensive erasure to its factory-recertified drives. The sanitization and erasure practices prevent data recovery after decommissioning, adhering to industry standards such as IEEE 2883, NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1, and ISO/IEC 27040:2015.

“Tens of millions of hard drives are still being shredded yearly, and we need to reduce the use of destructive sanitization methods,” said Jason Feist, Seagate's SVP, Products and Markets. “Seagate builds circularity into the drives we bring to market. The collaboration with eBay will increase the amount of data that can be stored on top quality, recertified hard drives.”

In FY2023, Seagate extended the life of approximately 1.19 million hard drives and solid-state drives through its circularity program, preventing 553 metric tons of e-waste1. Seagate aims to minimize e-waste by placing quality hard drives back into service and extending their product lifecycles.

“eBay is proud to work with Seagate on this exciting partnership,” said Renée Morin, eBay’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “Refurbishing items gives them a longer life and generally reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In our efforts to be a responsible, sustainable marketplace, this collaboration shows that we all have a part to play.”