While technological advancement is beneficial for consumers with faster, more powerful, and more…read morefeature rich electronic goods being brought to the marketplace, the downside is these shorter refresh cycles are exacerbating the ever growing problem of "e-waste."
I would venture to guess that most Americans have some inventory of old MP3 players (iPods being the most likely), laptops/desktop computers, video game consoles, TVs, and increasingly obsolete cell phones. All of this e-waste usually ends up in a junk drawer or in a box stuffed in an attic, basement, or garage "just in case" you might need it in an emergency. Or, you rationalize since you once upon a time spent thousands of dollars on this "stuff," that it might have some financial value in the future; btw, it won't.
A few jobs ago, eAsset Solutions came to my workplace to assist with collection and disposal of old computers, monitors, and other peripherals. eAsset is certified to work with government agencies and I was very impressed with the professionalism of the staff and they answered all my questions regarding the safeguards and procedures they utilize to ensure data sanitization from hard drives and finally data destruction by physically shredding the drives.
Bonus that eAsset Solutions meticulously strips all of the heavy metals, plastics, circuit boards for responsible recycling, instead of those items ending up in landfills.
My first generation i3 laptop from (wait for it)...2010 finally died. I'd been DIY-ing it by adding additional RAM and a SSD, so that it could run up to Win10. But with the new hardware requirements, my old Dell wouldn't take an install of Windows 11. When I upgraded my old platter based HD to a SSD back in 2018, I brought that drive to eAsset for shredding, and I once again took my entire laptop back recently for responsible disposal.
Walk in, and explain to the friendly staff person that you want a HD shredded. You can hand them the entire laptop if you don't know how to remove it, and they will perform the extraction for you...included in the price of the HD shredding. After removing the HD, if you want you can walk back to their shredder (an ominous looking device) and watch as the technician "feeds" your HD into a tray, and a few seconds later, you hear the "crunch" of metal on metal, and watch as your HD is reduces to metallic scrap. It's actually very cool! If you want to watch your HD being shredded, I'd call first since some days, there isn't a tech on duty...but rest assured that your HD will be shredded and recycled.
And how much is this service? As of this review, it's only $9...not a bad deal at all for piece of mind of knowing that the data on your old computer will not be retrieved by "bad actors," for identity theft or other nefarious intentions. I've used software programs which are supposed to "erase" or "blank" a HD by overwriting it multiple times. But nowadays, hackers and other cyber criminals have such sophisticated tools, that physically shredding a HD is probably the most secure method of data destruction.
Note: they also will destroy and recycle old cellphones for $9, but they only perform the data wipe on site, and send the phones off site for recycling.
Kudos also to eAsset Solutions for having bins inside and outside the building for dropping off old electronics for recycling (for FREE!); and my technician also mentioned that also accept old DVDs and CDs for recycling. I don't know about anyone else, but I had a few spindles of blank DVDs which have been gathering dust, so I'm glad I was also able to drop them off here.
And if you do stop by to either drop off old electronics, or to have something destroyed/recycled, be sure to peruse the vintage "old skool" tech in the lobby. Most folks will gasp in amazement when they see what cell phones used to look like when they were primarily used for making phone calls.
