Don’t know what to do with your old laptop?
It’s getting a bit run down and you need to have a newer model.
You want more power for all you have to do online.
The battery gave out on you for the last time and you’re fed up.
Recycling Your Laptop
Once you find the ideal new laptop and bring it home, you will be stuck with two laptops on your hands. That’s a waste of space, which is probably hard to come by due to all your other clutter. Well, the answer to your problem is laptop recycling. Nowadays, laptops are an essential part of our daily lives. Whether it’s running a business or attending to personal matters at home, laptops have become a necessity. With a new generation coming to light every few years and featuring any number of improvements to weight, power, etc., it’s easy to succumb and buy a new one regularly. Most consumers don’t realize that electronics recycling has such great importance, but it does.
Why Recycle Your Laptop?
Some really good reasons you probably don’t know about are the EPA states that the recycling of 1 million laptops can save an amount of power equal to the energy used by over 3,500 U.S homes in one year. Electronics have recyclable parts that can go into new products. Electronics can have toxic materials that will cause damage to the environment they are simply placed in a landfill for disposal.
Clearing Information From a Laptop Before Recycling
Before you can even think about how to recycle your laptop, you should be aware of how to clear all sensitive information from it. Think about it. Certain things we do online concern our confidential data like our driver’s license, bank account, and social security number. We also use a username and password for many of our online accounts.
So you must be certain that all of your personal data moves over to your new laptop and off of the old one before recycling.
Wiping a Laptop For Recycling
Backup — Cloud services and an external hard drive will allow you to move all necessary data to your new laptop.
De-Authorize — iTunes and Adobe are two examples of applications that limit how many devices can access them. You must deauthorize your old device on these apps prior to recycling. If not, you may find that you cannot access them on your new laptop.
Clean and Reset — Use software that meets the DOD standard to wipe the old hard drive clean. Windows and Apple have reset and restore directions to help you.
Now go ahead and recycle.
Why It’s Important to Recycle Computer Monitors
Right now there isn’t really anyone definition of electronic waste. It’s a general term that covers consumer and business electronic devices that have put simply outlived their usefulness. Electronics recycling is a matter of returning items to their original state, or in other words, reducing them to raw material. All electronic items that require recycling a put through a testing phase to identify any components that are able to be reused. Unless you are an expert, you don’t realize how many toxic components there can be to electronic waste.
If you need to recycle a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor, you should know that it has four to eight pounds of lead. Also, if your screen is a liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen, it’s backlit by small fluorescent bulbs that have mercury inside them. These are both toxic metals that must stay inside the monitor. That’s why it’s so important to do monitor recycling. Because these monitors need to be kept out of landfills. However, be careful when recycling them. You will have to take them somewhere to be recycled because your curbside recycling program will most likely not accept them for recycling.
Where to Recycle Laptop Computers
Now it’s time to dispose of your computer by doing Ewaste recycling. So where do you take your laptop computer to recycle it? You need to take your laptop to a well-known recycling company with a solid reputation. One that concentrates on correct dismantling or reuse. It might not be easy to find a recycling company or center near where you live. However, nowadays, most neighborhoods have one nearby. Just do some online research to find out where the nearest one is.
References
Environmental Health & Safety — https://ehs.ucsc.edu/programs/waste-management/recycling-disposal/e-waste.html
GreenCitizen.com — https://greencitizen.com/laptop-recycling/
MicroAnt.com — https://www.microant.co/
