Learn How to Recycle Your Technology

Do your part by donating our old technology or getting rid of it in an environmentally friendly way.

- Eric Griffith

We love our computers, smartphones, and gadgets—at least until they stop working. Then these devices and their peripherals, from printers, monitors, and cases to batteries, cables, and accessories, often become digital garbage.

These products aren’t made to last, after all. No computer or phone maker is going to mind if you upgrade every year or two. In fact, they count on it. Consequently, all this junk ends up in the back of your closet or collecting dust in your garage, because you aren’t sure what to do with it.

The best thing to do is donate or recycle it. Contribute your old computers and phones to groups that will fix them, clean them, and put them back into circulation. Even the oldest computer—something you consider the most obsolete of digital dinosaurs—can probably be used by someone.

There are times, though, when a device is too far gone to bring back to life again. Even a charity doesn’t want unusable rubbish. That junk—called e-waste—is potentially dangerous. Electronics are filled with “heavy metals” (read: toxic metals) and carcinogenic chemicals that are fine when you’re using them, but not so much when they’re sitting in a landfill or, worse, when people try to recycle them incorrectly. Thousands of tons of e-waste are shipped overseas yearly to countries like China and India, where they get dumped and maybe burned, a process that puts mercury and lead into the air.

So, here are the places you can take your old or even dead electronics, so they can either end up being used by someone in need or safely recycled.

THE BEST PLACES TO RECYCLE TECH

E-STEWARDS (E-STEWARDS.ORG)