Recycle with CompuCycle during the Holidays

TVs, cell phones, laptops, and tablets are common gifts that millions of people receive every holiday season. While getting new gadgets is exciting, have you stopped to think about what happens to your old electronics? Sadly last year, 384,000,000 electronics ended up in landfills, exposing Americans to toxic chemicals.

If you plan on receiving new electronics this holiday season and want to retire your previous models, be sure to do so responsibly with CompuCycle! Check out the items we accept before dropping anything off, and you might be surprised by what we accept.

What to do With Your Old Electronics?

Once you’ve determined what items you will recycle, you can drop off your electronics at the CompuCycle facility during our normal business hours free of charge! We have two Saturday collection events left in December where you can drop off your items. See our collection events calendar for all of the details. You can also go to http://dropoff.houstontx.gov/ to see all of the participating storage facilities that we are partnered with as drop-off sites for electronics to be recycled. CompuCycle also guarantees all hard drive data is destroyed through our recycling process.

Please encourage your friends and family members to recycle their unwanted electronic items as well. Ensure they know that when electronics are not responsibly recycled, they can easily end up in landfills, releasing toxic elements into our air and water streams. Here are some reasons why you should avoid throwing away your old electronics.

Environmental Hazard

Electronics are chock full of brominated flame retardants, halogenated polymers, chromium, beryllium oxide, sulfur, mercury, cadmium, lead, and arsenic, etc., that are toxic and contaminate spoil, pollute the air, and leach their way to water sources if thrown into the garbage and make their way to a landfill. By leaking into our ecosystem, they harm plant and animal life and contaminate our food sources.

Some Electronics are Reusable

Other than that, e-recycling creates employment opportunities and new streams of revenue in the economy. Most of the time, the electronics that are of no use to you are reusable and are of great value for underprivileged communities and individuals who cannot afford new electronic devices. Furthermore, recycling electronics contribute to energy and natural resource preservation efforts. It takes 50 pounds of chemicals, 1.5 tons of water, and 500 pounds of fossil fuel to manufacture a monitor and a computer. Imagine that! You can save that many resources by dropping off a single reusable personal computer to the nearest CompuCycle drop-off facility.

Data Security

If you do not care about green life, even then, there is a reason to recycle your old electronics instead of trashing them. It is the privacy and safety of your data. You can protect your personal and confidential information by handing over your electronic assets to credible recycling companies as they wipe them off before destroying them. When you trash your electronics, you can never know who gets their hands on them and what they can do with your personal data. Even flashing your electronics is not enough as it can be restored and used against you.

From embarrassing stuff making its way to the internet for all to see to information that can ruin your future professional and career opportunities to data that can be swiped to access your bank accounts, threats of the information in your electronics getting into the wrong hands are aplenty. CompuCycle’s refurbishing and recycling programs are incorporated with data-deleting services that ensure there is not even a single piece of information left on any of your electronic assets before they are recycled.

Legal Requirement

Another reason to be careful and wary of trashing your electronics is that you could be breaking the law by doing that. Half of the United States of America has laws pertaining to e-waste on their books. Texas e-waste laws are comprehensive and regulate individuals and businesses to follow certain measures adhering to e-waste disposal. These laws and regulations are set to keep increasing and getting more and more strict as the problem becomes more serious.

Compucycle makes it easy to recycle your electronics responsibly, safely, and securely. By offering your unneeded electronic items to us, you can attain peace of mind for doing the right thing. You will be saving natural resources and preserving a lot of energy, and helping less privileged communities carry out fruitful operations and benefit from technology that they cannot have otherwise accessed. Furthermore, you will be preventing the spread of air, water, and soil contaminants, consequently aiding the health of natural life and the ecosystem.

By choosing CompuCycle, you will not have to worry about your data and personal information getting into wrong and potentially threatening hands. We are a company that is compliant with all local and international e-waste and e-recycling laws, and we are certified in this regard. So, get rid of your electronics by bringing them to us and feel proud of yourself!