Originally, I never felt that the EAR issue was that germane at data centers, since you're mostly protecting against someone backing through the loading door with a truck and stealing trays of drives.
The disposal issue is valid, that was just something we were diligent with using a secure disposal service.
Key management has always been an issue. Since no one wanted to be there when the machines spooled up after a glitch at 3am to type in a password to open the volumes. Everything else is basically locking the file cabinet drawers and taping the key to the back of it.
Nowadays, it's different. Its more ubiquitous. Encrypting a laptop is a mouse click, and painless after that. Cloud providers have the infrastructure to manage it at their level.
I'm still now sure what the solution is for a "self hosted" infrastructure. Hardware key modules are still pretty expensive. I haven't (not that I've looked at all recently) seen a writeup of how best to set of encryption on those 4 Dells my friend has racked across the country in Georgia (though even modern machines have some level of volume encryption I think).