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Responsibly disposing of old computers and printers is free, accessible, and considerably simpler than most people think.
Old electronic devices have a way of making themselves invisible. The laptop that was replaced two years ago is still in the office, the printer that stopped working is in the garage, and the office tower is somewhere in a closet behind things you haven’t touched since you moved in. None of it is used, nothing disappears on its own, and the vague intention of taking care of it is always postponed because taking care of it seems complicated. This is not the case. Most major retailers and manufacturers offer free trade-in programs that handle old technology responsibly, and using them usually requires nothing more than a short drive and a few minutes of preparation.
Large retailers such as Best Buy and Staples have become digital waste drop-off centers. You can walk into a store with a dead PC or a clunky old scanner and hand it in for free, regardless of where you bought it. Some of these places will even offer you a discount on new equipment or a trade-in credit just to help them salvage heavy metals and plastics that don’t belong in a landfill. It’s the easiest way to reclaim your storage space without feeling stupid about throwing your electronics in the trash.
The only real “job” on your part is to make sure you don’t convey your entire life story with the material. Before emptying a device, you should perform a legitimate data wipe, not just drag files to the Trash. A 10-minute factory reset or dedicated disk cleanup tool ensures that your old tax returns and saved passwords don’t become someone else’s property. Stop acting like you’re going to “repair” that 2015 laptop and instead let a professional recycler dismantle it into parts.
What to do before recycling your old computer
Wherever you take or post your items to be recycled, you will want to protect them your data removing it as best you can. One way to do this is to perform a factory reset on your computer. OUR guided walks you throughout the process.
Where to recycle your old printers and computers
Some retail stores accept computers and printers for recycling, but this is not always a free service. Policies vary by company.
Apple
You can recycle your old Apple computers, monitors and peripherals, such as printers, for free at an Apple Store, but there’s a costly catch. Under the Apple Free Recycling program, you must purchase an eligible Apple computer or monitor to benefit from this service. Need another option? A third party company called Gazelle buys old Macbook to recycle them. After accepting Gazelle’s offer, you print a prepaid label or request a prepaid box and ship the machine to them.
Learn more: Phone and laptop repair goes mainstream thanks to iFixit Push
Best buy
Best Buy generally accepts up to three household items per household per day for recycling for free, including desktop computers and printers, as well as other items ranging from e-readers to vacuum cleaners. Although the limit is three for most items, there is a higher limit for laptops: Best Buy will take five per household per day. Note that the rules for filing monitors vary by state and it’s not always free. Best Buy also offers mail-in recycling for some items, but it’s not free either. A small box that holds up to 6 pounds costs $23, while a large box (up to 15 pounds) costs $30. A CNET editor recently took an old, non-working tube TV-VCR combo for the e-bike and was happy to pay $30 to get rid of it.
Office Depot
Office Depot and OfficeMax merged in 2013. The retailers offer a technology trade-in program in-store and online, where you may be able to get an in-store gift card in exchange for your old computers and printers. If the device has no trade-in value, the company will recycle it free of charge. Office Depot also sells e-waste recycling boxes that you can fill with electronics to recycle and then drop off at stores, but they’re not free. Small boxes costs $8.39 and support up to 20 pounds, means costs $18.29 and can support up to 40 pounds, and large boxes costs $28 and can support up to 60 pounds.
Staples
You can bring your old desktops, laptops, printers and more to the Staples checkout for free recycling, even if they weren’t purchased there. According to a Staples representative, the retailer also has a free at-home battery recycling box, which has led to customers recycling thousands of batteries per week, up from a previous average of 50 per week. Here’s a list of everything that can be recycled at Staples.
Watch this: Give your old phone a second life: the right way to recycle and reuse it
Where to find electronics recycling centers
If you don’t live near a major retailer or prefer to take your computers and printers to a recycling center, you can locate locations near you using search tools provided by Earth911 and the Consumer Technology Association.
Earth911
Use the Recycling Center Finder feature on Earth911 to find recycling centers near your zip code that accept laptops, desktops and printers. Note that the results may also reveal places accepting cell phones and not computers or printers, so you may need to do a little filtering.
Greener gadgets
Visit the Consumer Technology Association’s Greener Gadgets Recycling Locator to find local recycling centers in your area that will accept old items. The search function also allows you to filter the results to separately search for locations that take up computers versus printers.
Tamara Palmer is a DJ, author and editor of small-batch print magazine California Eating. See full bio
