Whether It’s an Old Laptop or A Broken Graphics Card, Don’t Trash It! Recycle It!

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Your old electronic devices are worth so much more than you think they are. When you look at your old laptops, smartphones, and tablets you might just see clutter. The fact is our electronic devices contain a lot of valuable components. The real worth in recycling or properly disposing of e-waste is to our planet. Recycling your obsolete or broken technology like an old cell phone or a broken video card is crucial for two reasons; one, it’s important that they don’t end up in the garbage; two, many of the internal parts are worth a good amount of money. 

Before discussing the financial benefits of selling or trading in your old or broken gear, let’s talk about the environmental cost of not properly disposing of these machines and parts. Whether it’s a giant desktop computer from the 90s or a smartphone from just a few years ago, our old devices are taking up too much space in landfills. In 2019, the United States generated over seven tons of e-waste alone. Only a measly fifteen percent of that was recycled. The rest is taking up too much space in environmentally destructive landfills or worse, being incinerated. 

Many components used in computers and other electronics contain some toxic materials. These materials are generally harmless to us while we are using these devices but, once they begin to break down in a landfill or are incinerated, it’s a different story. Parts of these devices contain chemicals and elements that are harmful to the soil, ground water and atmosphere. When elements like lead, mercury and cadmium contaminate the water we drink and the air we breathe, it’s a problem. 

Making sure that your e-waste is properly disposed of should be part of being a responsible tech user. If appealing to your sense of environmental responsibility isn’t enough, these parts also contain a lot of valuable materials that people will pay top dollar for. Along with those toxic elements we mentioned before, many components in our devices contain things like gold, copper, and silver. There are plenty of scrapping outfits or online parts dealers that will pay you cash or cryptocurrency for various components.

These places aren’t just paying for the parts that contain copious amounts of rare earth metals either. Some components that are in demand will command good money on a secondary market. Take for instance the humble GPU; because of their import in gaming and graphic design, graphics cards are an important component in home computing. Did you know that these graphics cards are also vital to the mining of crypto and the making and maintaining of NFTs? The surge in demand for GPUs has made even a broken graphics card worth a decent amount of money.

So, it’s clear that recycling your components is advantageous to you, whether or not you are an environmentally minded person. However, it’s worth noting that many of the valuable Earth metals involved in the manufacturing of these gadgets need to be mined. Mining also isn’t great for the environment, so by selling parts that contain these metals to an online buyer, you are also helping reduce the strain on our natural resources. It’s also important to know that many of the places where these resources are mined are home to endangered species. The less demand for new resources, the less habitat destruction these animals will face. So, recycling your computer and smartphone parts is a win for you in that you make money. And it’s a win for the planet.

If that’s not enough, here’s another incentive for you to recycle and dispose of your old tech the right way, your data. We are entering an age where our data is nearly as valuable as those rare Earth minerals we’ve been talking about. Most people would never let an old laptop or smartphone sit in an unsecured landfill. Any good e-waste disposal company or online retailer will make sure all your tech is wiped clean of data. While something like a broken video card won’t have any data on it, a hard drive or CPU will. You certainly don’t want your data falling into the wrong hands. So, let’s review. You need to recycle your e-waste properly because it’s not only good for the environment, but also necessary for its survival. And when you recycle it properly, you are also securing your precious data. This ensures your online identity and financial information stay out of the wrong hands. And lastly, you can make some serious coin from your useless e-junk. Online buyers do all of this for you. Get in touch with one of the thousands of companies on the internet whose main mission in life is to buy your old phones and computer parts.

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