What Exactly Gets Recycled when you Recycle Your Computer?

As electronics play an increasingly important role in our lives, electronic waste is growing. Effective management is the key to a sustainable future, and recycling is the best option for keeping toxic electronics out of landfill. So, what inside those machines is reusable?

A lot. Recyclable and reusable materials are found in significant amounts in every computer, as well as in peripherals.

Recyclable substances in your company’s computers

Throughout the country, batteries for some laptops and cell phones are required to be recycled in accordance with the Battery Act, signed into law into 1996. The batteries are often nickel metal hydride, nickel-cadmium or lithium-ion. Metal oxide can be extracted from these batteries for reuse.

Valuable metals including gold and copper are found in high volume in computers. Both are prized for their conductivity and resistance to corrosion, with gold being almost entirely corrosion-resistant. With so much of these metals appearing in circuit boards, a large quantity of circuit boards is a goldmine (pun intended): one metric ton of circuit boards contains between 40 and 800 times the concentration of gold ore, and 30 to 40 times the concentration of copper ore typically mined in the United States. Power cords also contain plenty of reusable copper.

Plastic is reusable too. High-impact polystyrene is often used in computer and external drive casings, and often makes up most of your mice and keyboards. This useful material can be recycled as a great many items, such as insulation, packaging, casings, and even plastic eating utensils. Recycling polystyrene makes good financial sense for manufacturers too; with oil prices rising, used polystyrene is a less-expensive resource for making new plastic parts.

So when your company recycles its computers, you’re contributing both to environmental protection, and to industry in equal measure. It’s a clear win-win.