How to Dispose of Old Laptop Securely

You can safely recycle hard drives up to three years old. Two year old drives shouldn’t need to be destroyed. If the item is damaged, leave it in the shop to be recycled. We’ve published guides to all of the below options. If there’s no official service where you live (UK or US), try a supported service and make sure it runs for at least three years. We update the sites frequently.

Dr. Mazza offers secure decommissioning in the USA and overseas. They have recycling centres and can also organize specialist international efforts. They guarantee maximum time, which is only 7–9 business days.



It is important you trade-in all your other devices first. Stand-by equipment should be exchanged for other local electronics that have a two year minimum repair warranty. Care should be taken to select the right device for your household, as some chargers, power bricks, and other peripherals are obsolescence-prone. You can do a scan of your old equipment to pick the right device for your household, see the scan here or contact them directly — some machines need a photo to register online. They provide a recycling log, which you can access here. Check this excellent guide to see if there’s a service near you that can take old hard drives and make them safe to recycle. They’re all international, but NZ & Australia provide the best options.

 

If your computer is seven years old and still plugged in, you could be prosecuted for battery disposal after just one day. That’s if the town is selling the old computer as scrap or garbage. Don’t assume your computer is okay; if you bought it new, they might have given it to the service centre for refurbishment first. Make sure you ‘keep your receipts’ if you want to know whether it can be recycled properly. The Enviaaseré, a French company, also offers a service to safely recycle hard drives. Enviaaseré’s website is in French but we found an English translation if you google ‘recycle hard drives on an excel desktop’.

They have a combined recycling centre as well as an online interface and will charge you by weight, which is far cheaper than the UK equivalent of 25 pounds per kg. The French calculator should correctly suggest that you can safely recycle only up to 3 years old drives.

Tivoli (Torino, Italy) use brown paper to wrap contacted metal particles, which further reduces the risk of energetic degradation and recycling waste. They will charge you at the rate of 200 euros per tonne for activated carbon.

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