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38 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2026 hacked some years ago, which had made me conscious of data security. So several years ago, I began looking much more closely at what was happening in the electronics and data-security markets, and it be- came apparent to me that a gap was developing. The amount of sensitive informa- tion we carry on electronic devices was increasing enormously, while at the same time, bad actors and data- recovery techniques were becoming more sophisticated. Yet the way we dealt with those devices at the end of their lives had not fundamen- tally kept pace. That led me to look beyond data security and ask a much broader question: What actually happens to an electronic device at the end of its life? Once you follow that journey, you quickly encounter not just data security, but landfill, plas- tics and PFAS, overseas exports, critical-material recovery, and a general lack of transparency. Xscindo grew out of trying to address those issues together rather than treating each one as a sepa- rate problem. What does Xscindo mean? It is derived from the Latin word for "destroy." The principle behind Xscindo is fairly simple: If an elec- tronic device has reached the end of its useful life, we want to eliminate the liabilities associated with it, particularly the data and non-metal components, while recovering the metals and returning them to the domestic circular economy rather than allowing the device to end up in landfill. How does Xscindo's focus on e-waste and materi- als recovery play into data security? They're much more closely connected than they might initially appear. An end-of-life electronic de- vice has both assets and liabilities. The metals are the assets, so we want to recover those. The liabili- ties include sensitive data, plastics, PFAS, and the environmental consequences of improper disposal. What interested me was whether you could design an end-of-life process around addressing both sides of that equation simultaneously. Instead of asking only, "How much metal can we recover?" we started asking, "Can we absolutely destroy the data, address the environmental liabili- ties, and still preserve the metals for domestic reuse?" That became the basis of our approach. The world is in a very different place than even three years ago about this issue. In the area of product circularity, what has been done well, in your opinion? Awareness has changed dramatically. A growing number of states restrict electronic waste from landfills, manufacturers have developed take-back programs, and consumers understand that elec- tronics shouldn't simply be thrown away. Where I think the next evolution needs to occur is what we mean by recycling. Collecting a device is only the beginning. We need to understand where it ultimately goes, what happens to the data, the plastics, and other non-metal compo- nents, and whether the metals genuinely return to the circular economy. In PCB manufacturing, metals recovery is part of the business model. There is a direct financial ben- efit for a company to do it. It's true that we don't want heavy metals going into the environment. It is regulated, so that tried-and-true business initiative happens to also have environmental benefits, to your point. Absolutely. Metals recovery is an important part of the equation, both economically and environmen- tally. The broader challenge is that only a relatively small proportion of global e-waste currently enters documented recycling streams, and even the word "recycling" can mean very different things depend- ing on what ultimately happens to the material. For me, the important question is not simply whether something was sent for recycling, but what actually happened to it afterward. Were the metals recovered and returned to the circular economy? What happened to the plastics and other non-metal components? Was the data securely destroyed, and A i d e n N e a r y