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How To Recycle Gadgets Without Polluting Developing Countries
If you get a new gadget for the holidays, or any time of the year, there’s always a question of what to do with your old phone, game system, desktop, monitors and other random electronics.
The easy answer is to recycle your gadgets, but finding the right place to recycle your gadgets can be a challenge.
Unscrupulous gadget recyclers may ship your old gadget off to China or developing countries to be broken down by hand and melted to recover precious metals by children and adults in hazardous conditions.
Responsibly recycling your old gadgets doesn’t take much effort and it certainly beats throwing them in the dumpster to pollute landfills or shipping them off to pollute developing countries.
Responsible Gadget Recycling
If you want to recycle your electronics in a responsible way, the two best options I have found are to use Gazelle.com or Best Buy. Both of these companies will recycle your gadgets in a responsible manner, and you might even be able to make money from your old gadget.
Sell Your Old Electronics to Gazelle.com
My favorite way to get rid of old gadgets is to sell them to Gazelle.com. While most of you may know about this site as a place that will buy your old iPhone, they actually purchase all types of electronics to resell or recycle.
You don’t even have to pay for shipping. If you recycle enough, Gazelle will even send you a box to send them back in. I’ve recycled old phones, that I thought were worthless, and received $30. If there is no value, you can still send in many items to be recycled.
Recycle Computers, Phones, Monitors and More at Best Buy
If you prefer to just take a load of items into a local store, head over to Best Buy where you can drop off all types of electronics and gadgets for recycling.
Best Buy will recycle TVs, laptops, computers, cell phones, cameras and much more. You can recycle most of these items for free. To find the closest Best Buy that will recycle your electronics, check out the Best Buy Recycling page.
Electronics Recycling Standards
Both Gazelle and Best Buy offer promises and answers to their recycling processes. Most importantly, both Gazelle and Best Buy will not ship your old gadgets to developing countries to be scrapped or reclaimed. They also bar their downstream partners from shipping these e-waste materials to developing countries. This means Best Buy can’t just and the recycling over to a third-party that is free to do awful things with your old electronics.
If you want to get a better idea about how responsible electronic recycling is done, you can check out this video from Best Buy that describes how the company recycles everything from desktops and hard drives to old computer monitors.
What do you do with your old electronics and gadgets?
