We need a fast way to securely wipe hard drives.

Is there really any way to recover data after doing 1 pass writing zeros to
every sector? (This is what we are doing now using the free version of
Active Killbits, but it takes over an hour per hard drive.)

If we repartition and reformat Windows NTFS drives as Ext3, is there any
way to recover data from them?  (We found this method is faster, but are
not sure if it is as secure as the above.)

The company will not pay for a degausser.

Safety requirements prevent us from doing physical destruction of the
"sledge-o-matic" variety.

We use a computer recycler, but do not trust them 100% to destroy our
data.  We know for a fact that equipment they get from us sit unguarded in
a warehouse for months before destruction.

Interested in hearing opinions on this.