Advice on recycling electronics

badmonk

TXB Member since 2001
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Sep 13, 2013
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Hey guys

Looking for a little advice. Prob like most of you, I have a small mountain of electronic devices which have piled up over the years, being a collection of mine, my 2 kids and my wife.

Now of course I would love to recycle them to be eco friendly etc but it would literally take me days and days to go through each device, power it up, format it etc (I have a LOT of devices, iMacs, macbooks, MacBook Pro, iPhones, ipads, PC desktop and laptops)

Also some of my stuff like an iMac from 20 years ago, I don’t even have power cable, mouse for it and don’t know how to log into my Apple ID for that particular machine.

So does anyone have any ideas or advice please? Maybe you’re in the same position as me, or have experienced this. I would love to recycle but don’t trust giving all my stuff to a company not having wiped the data.

Is there any easier options? I mean if I have to power up ALL my devices, then log in, then format it, seriously I dont have that time, I was thinking about maybe looking for a place similar to a scrap yard where the machines could all be crushed lol, but extreme but if no other options….

I asked in Apple store about my devices but again they said they could do it, but would have to format drives first. Surely isn’t there a machine they could use, which just zaps the hard drive rendering it useless? They must have situations where they have people bring in old iphones and have forgotten sign in details etc so how do they wipe the device then?

Sorry for long post but any ideas would be great! Thank you 😊
 
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If you are concerned about the data on the devices the best thing to do is first encrypt your device (I think this might be mobile devices only) and then do a factory reset. If someone then tried to get data from all they would find are the partial remains of an encryption key.

Magnets are another way to destroy what is on any device but you would something industrial sized for it to work quickly.

As for eco disposal - its only possible via companies that are willing to do it. You could brute force it literally smashing open the device and removing the batteries as these are what cause the worst eco damage during disposal.
 
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I think Best Buy will take many electronics. Worth asking them about that and data security.



The DIY option is to make a bootable Linux USB and use the Shred command.



Or job open the device, find the hard drive, and put a drill to it.
 
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Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah like I said I haven't got the time or patience to find a devices charger (some I don’t even have as over 20 years ago), charge up a device then wipe data etc

i will pop into my local Apple store and ask again. Surely they must have a machine which can delete data like D V ANT mentioned, magnet or EMP blast lol, but I can’t imagine Apple charging up every device they receive to recycle and formatting it, this would take bloody ages. Pop in a machine, press a button and BLAM, instant data wipe.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah like I said I haven't got the time or patience to find a devices charger (some I don’t even have as over 20 years ago), charge up a device then wipe data etc

i will pop into my local Apple store and ask again. Surely they must have a machine which can delete data like D V ANT mentioned, magnet or EMP blast lol, but I can’t imagine Apple charging up every device they receive to recycle and formatting it, this would take bloody ages. Pop in a machine, press a button and BLAM, instant data wipe.

In the CRT days ( I mean Cathode Ray Tubes ) sometimes there would be a drift in the display that looks like ghosting or color warping. This could be corrected with a Degaussing Tool that is a powerful magnetic ring. While it can pull a CRT display back to calibrations, I bet it could fvck up a computer really good.

I also used wipe Beta Tapes with a magnetic eraser back when I worked in a TV station. It was a machine you push a button and a magnetic pulse kills the video info.




Hmmm...... maybe onto something

 
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I used to take old computers to the Good Will drop off in the city I used to live in, obviously not to donate lol but they did have a spot to drop off electronics to be recycled.
 
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