Plus Ideas For Reusing Your Old Laptop
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Old laptops are typically not accepted in curbside recycling programs, but they can be processed through special e-waste recycling programs. And because laptops may contain valuable materials, including gold, silver, and platinum, recycling them is actually profitable, which means plenty of eager recyclers are willing to take them off your hands.
Since laptops do contain heavy metals and hazardous chemicals that can negatively impact the environment, they should be handled carefully and recycling should be left to the professionals.
Why Can’t I Just Throw Old Devices And Batteries Away
If your electronics wind up in a landfill, they don’t only leave behind wires and plastic . If dumped or improperly disposed of, e-waste can damage the environment. Most electronics contain toxic materials like lead, flame retardants and chromium. These materials can cause damage to human kidneys, the blood and the nervous system, according to a blog post by Ilene Lubell, president of the Mayer Metals Corporation, which recycles old electronics for businesses.
When electronics are incorrectly dumped or thrown away, those toxins can leak into landfills, groundwater supply and vaporize into the atmosphere when heated, according to Lubell.
There are a number of eco-friendly ways to dispose of old electronics that could help people in need or underserved communities. It’s important to note that disposal protocol may differ by device.
Behind the scenes, devices are recycled, refurbished or redistributed. Sometimes they’re mined for parts or melted down to extract the rare earth materials within. Apple’s Material Recovery Lab in Texas uses robots to dismantle iPhones at a rate of 200 devices per hour.
How To Properly Dispose Of Your Old Laptop
When disposing of your old laptop, its imperative to do so safely and securely, making sure that your personal and private data is securely removed and that you are not adversely affecting the environment.
There are a few things to consider when disposing of your old laptop, such as data security and local recycling laws. Its essential to understand how recycling works in your location and what can and cant be recycled to avoid hefty fines, or worse, damaging the environment.
Your personal information should also be a significant consideration. Old mechanical hard drives dont completely delete data when wiped. You could be leaving your private information available to those with some technical know-how and a nefarious plan .
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Delete Your Browser Data
Most available guides on how to completely dispose of old computers, highlight this step as one of the most important. Cybercriminals can target you based on access to your browser records so you have to delete them. Deciding whether or not you need to delete your browser data remotely, largely depends on the browser you use. Some browsers like Google Chrome and Safari are connected to email accounts and can be controlled by login processes. This means that once you sign out, your browser history will no longer be accessible to external parties.
Securely Wipe Your Hard Drive
If you have extremely sensitive data on your hard drives, then deleting them is not enough. When you delete a file, it never really leaves the system and someone else can access it later. You should invest in secure data destruction methods like software data erasure, degaussing and hard drive shredding.
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Destroying A Hard Drive With A Hammer
This is the fastest and most effective method of physically destroy a hard drive. A user just needs to take a hammer in his hand and start hitting a hard drive with it. Moreover, one should be alone in a room while performing this task to avoid any accident with flying pieces of metal and glasses. Once it is break in pieces completely, collect and dispose them carefully.
You Can Recycle Your Old Laptops Phones Cameras And Batteries For Free Here’s How
Don’t throw away your old electronics if you’ve upgraded to new devices this holiday season. Here’s what to do.
What do you do with your phone when it’s served its purpose? We’ll give you some options.
Gadgets can pile up over the years — new ones are gifted during the holidays, old ones become obsolete and break. You probably have a drawer full of old batteries and cables, and some old phones, laptops and desktops lying around, which may only be growing larger if you replaced any electronics over the holidays. Perhaps you keep them for nostalgic reasons or because you thought you might be able to use them again.
Whatever the tech, when it’s finally time to say goodbye, there’s a right way to dispose of your old gadgets — and a lot of wrong ways.
Learn smart gadget and internet tips and tricks with CNET’s How To newsletter.
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Time To Upgrade Your Computer Phone Or Other Gadgets Here’s How To Dispose Of The Old Stuff
Computers, smartphones, tablets and so on are an integral part of daily life, but as they become obsolete more and more quickly, we’re faced with the growing problem of disposing of all our e-waste properly. Electronic products thrown into landll leak toxic materials into soil and water, resulting in contamination of the food chain, while rare and non-renewable materials are wasted instead of being re-used.
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How Can Computers Be Recycled
Computers are recycled for the same reason anything else is recycled. We recycle computers so that we can reuse their old parts in new computers. There is a persistent and erroneous belief that the only reason we disregard old technology in favor of the new, is because the parts and processes of the older models have become obsolete. And in fact, the concept of a type of “planned obsolescence” is gaining increasing validity in the face of commercial, technological improvement.
Planned obsolescence is the idea is that products are planned and designed to be purposefully frail or to last for only a pre-planned amount of time before they need to be replaced. This does not work with every product manufactured today, but it can certainly work for appliances, cars, and computers. It is a topic that is enraging consumers and environmentalists the world over, according to The Guardian.
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To Magnetize Hard Drive
To destroy the particular hard drive, one can also use magnets. Now, if a user wants to dispose hard drive, then he can bring the magnet across hard drive and place it on the side for two to three minutes. After that, rub the magnet on a hard drive in a circular motion or back and forth. Do the same thing with another side of the hard disk. After doing this, all the data from hard disk gets deleted permanently.
Method 5: Crush to destroy a Hard Drive
This is the easiest and most widely used method to destroy a hard drive. However, the method takes some time but provides great results. A user can crush the hard disk with help of any heavy thing available, for example, one can use 8 to 10-ton press for hard drive disposal.
Method 6: Using Shredder for destroying a hard drive physically
This is one of the best methods hard drive disposals by shredding it with the industrial shredder. One can take industrial shredder on rent and can chuck their hard drive in it. Moreover, it is impossible to recover data from hard drive after shredding.
Method 7: Using Hardware Tools for destroying a hard drive with a drill
The another possible way to destroy a hard drive is by using hardware tools like a sandblaster, saw drill etc. One can take any of these tools on rent from nearby local hardware stores. Sandblaster removes the layer of materials from hard drive platter. Drill tool makes holes in platters through which data can not be recovered.
Computer And Smartphone Brand’s Green Credentials
Ever wondered about the green credentials of your computer, or any one of the many tech devices you own? Some manufacturers helpfully provide environmental information on their websites to explain their recycling schemes and green credentials, while others don’t give much away. This can make it difficult to compare between brands without having consistent information on their environmental impact.
Greenpeace has been producing the Guide to Greener Electronics since 2006 and has been tracking how the largest consumer electronics companies are managing their environmental impact. The latest report ranks 17 companies on three critical measures energy, resource consumption and chemicals.
- Energy rates the reduction of greenhouse gases though efficiency and renewable energy.
- Resource consumption focuses on sustainable design and the use of recycled materials.
- Chemicals rates the elimination of hazardous chemicals in the products and in manufacturing.
You can read the full report card for free at the Greenpeace website, but in terms of companies operating in Australia:
- Apple is the only manufacturer with a reasonable overall score of B-, scoring well for its work to renewable energy but stumbling thanks to to poor commitment to sustainable resource design and high-turnover due to short periods of planned obsolescence.
- Amazon, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi all fail due to poor or non-existent policies and limited transparency.
- Every other major manufacturer sits between C+ and D-.
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Refurbisher Or Registered Recycling Company
One of the steps on how to dispose of a laptop is to determine whether where to dispose it. You can recycle old laptops by bringing them over to a reputable refurbisher or electronics recycling company. They can either refurbish them or dispose of in an environmentally-safe method. As mentioned, there are many recycling companies and refurbishes that accept old laptops for recycling. For example, Microsoft has a global end-of-life program, partnering recycling organizations for facilitating old packaging, batteries, and other devices.
If you want to know any recycling organization near your country, you can visit Microsofts End-of-Life Management and Recycling website. Best Buy also accepts old laptops for recycling. In case you didnt know, Best Buy has already collected over two billion pounds of electronics devices and appliances for its recycling initiative. Other options include Staples and .
If youre interested in finding a registered Microsoft refurbisher, you can visit the Microsoft directory site. If your old laptop is no longer in good condition to donate, recycling is the key. For a more convenient search, you can navigate to Earth911s website for recycling drop-off sites. From the site, you can input your ZIP code and locate the nearest drop off location.
Congratulations You Have Disposed Of Your Laptop Securely
Give yourself a pat on the back. Not only you did not just carelessly throw your computer in the bin, but you also managed to either recoup some of the money you spent by remarketing it or reselling it, or you helped a person in need through a generous donation.
Getting rid of a laptop is not a challenging or time-consuming task, but it has to be taken seriously in order to rule out environmental, safety or financial concerns. This advice is valid whether youre getting rid of a desktop, laptop, tablet or electronic device in general.
Providing secure, straightforward asset recycling solutions to organisations such as
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How To Recycle Your Laptop Desktop And Peripherals
Getting rid of your old tech safely is easier than it might seem. There are government supported recycling services, charities and even independent businesses that will take your old gear off your hands. However, they are unlikely to accept hazardous or dangerous items.
Recycling Near You
Recycling Near You is one stop shop for all the e-cycling information you need. It’s an excellent, gigantic database administered by Planet Ark that lists recycling information, drop-off locations and curbside collection contact information relative to your postcode. This includes government-backed services, charities and private organisations. You can search each relevant database at these links:
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Government services the NTCRS
The National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme lets homes and small businesses dispose of their computers, computer components and TVs at drop-off points in each state and territory, free of charge. Under the scheme, any company that makes or imports TVs or computers into Australia is required to pay for the end-of-life recycling of their products.
You can recycle most e-waste products at NTCRS drop-off points, including:
- Laptops, notebooks and tablets
- Desktop computers
- Central processing units
- Printers
- Peripherals
TechCollect partners with businesses to create e-waste drop-off points.
How To Wipe A Computer Before Recycling It
Before you wipe anything, you should make sure to save any important data on a backup drive. External hard drives, USB jump drives, or even cloud storage will work, but you can always port it over to your new computer too. Thankfully, most modern computers make this fairly easy its a lot of cutting and pasting, or sliding files into folders.
To wipe the computer, you need to delete all the data that remains on the hard drive. This is not as simple as dragging all files to the recycle bin and deleting cookies, however, as several data recovery programs exist that can retrieve deleted data. Many can be found here.
The first step in this process is to manually delete files from the system. Shredding programs like File Shredder can overwrite the files and clean up the drive. It is recommended that files are shredded and overwritten several times to make them harder to retrieve. Data can be found on several drives within the machine, so each drive must be prepared in a different way.
Once you have completed the sometimes lengthy process of moving, deleting, and shredding your files, the next step is to format the computer. This means you restore the computer to factory settings. The process for doing this is different for a Windows PC, a Mac, and a Chromebook, of course, but all have fairly easy steps, even if you’re a novice.
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Destroying A Laptops Hard Drive
Despite not looking like much on its own, a hard drive can hold a lot of information, some of it confidential, that is considerably valuable in the wrong hands.
As weve outlined in our guide on how to dispose of a laptop securely, when disposing of an old laptop hard drive you should wipe the contents of the drive using dedicated formatting software, and use techniques to properly scrap it so its unsalvageable.
The Smart Way To Dispose Of Your Phones Laptopsand Desktops
Nothing lasts forever, and that sadly includes your expensive phone and computer. While theres no average lifespan for these devices , its inevitable that sooner or later youll either want or need the latest models.
However, if you think you can just chuck the old ones into the trash, think again! Not only is that terrible for the environment but it can also put your security and privacy at risk if someone decides to salvage your hard drive and see all the stuff you got up to over the years. Theres a better, safer way to get rid of your devices, and well be happy to tell you how to do it.
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Determine How Devices Will Be Identified For Disposal
It is important to determine an IT disposal policy for all company devices and categorise each device according to the type of data it stores. This policy should be updated each time a new device is introduced into the company, and it is vital that employees are aware of how this policy works. Determine what qualifies a computer to be suitable for resale, reuse by another employee, recycling of parts, or complete disposal. Whether you are reselling your computer to a third-party or assigning it to another employee, you should consider of who the next owner or user is. Remember that even if you are disposing of a computer because it is broken, the data on the computer may still be recoverable and you will need to ensure this is effectively destroyed.
Why Cant I Dispose Of My Laptop In A Bin
In learning how to dispose of a laptop, understanding you should not dispose of it in a bin is very important. Throwing your laptop in the bin isnt a good idea since it poses a serious threat to humans and the environment. Old gadgets, including laptops, fill up landfills and create a major problem. Old laptops contain toxic materials such as lead, flame retardants, chromium, and mercury. These toxins are associated with damages to the central nervous system, blood, and kidneys. This danger is why recycling old laptops is increasingly becoming crucial.
Moreover, toxins can leak into landfills and even reach bodies of water when you throw your old laptop in the trash bin. They also vaporize into the air, resulting in more hazardous incidents such as landfill fires. It is the primary reason why many states have begun shifting their focus on preventing toxins from leaking into landfills and creating further damage to the environment.
Due to these hazards posed by poorly disposed of laptops, governments are implementing the ban on disposing of electronic devices or putting them in the trash bin. As a result, the best solution to these environmental concerns is recycling. It is because proper disposal of electronic gadgets such as old laptops ensure that harmful substances dont leak into the environment.
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