Recycling Your Electronics – What you Need to Know
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,200 words · ~6 min read
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oh W oh
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so have you got some old electronics lying around and not sure about the
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proper way to dispose of them here's your first hint as much as you may or
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may not have enjoyed that silly little bit that we did there that was not it
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the Logitech g303 features a lightweight design an advanced Optical sensor with
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Delta zero technology for precise tracking and RGB lighting to match your
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setup check out the link in the video description to learn more now it's no
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great secret that to reduce your consumption or reuse that which has
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already been consumed is better in terms of ecological impact than and recycling
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it but sometimes it happens that you might have an unfortunate run of bad
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luck that causes oh I don't know three motherboards in a row to spontaneously
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die through no fault of your own or here's another scenario you've got
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devices that technically still work but have come to the point where absolutely
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no one not even your weird Uncle who keeps milk crates of electronics in his
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garage is willing to use them so the
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first question I usually get is why can't I just put my old CRT TV or
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motherboard or hard drive in the garbage
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and the answer is that while you actually technically can because most
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garbage collection Services frankly don't have the time or willingness to
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dig through your trash bin to see what you put in there there are a lot of good
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reasons why you shouldn't number one is
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that it keeps chemicals and heavy metals managed correctly E-Waste can contain
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mercury lead cadmium arsenic lithium and
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a wide variety of other harmful or dangerous substances number two is that
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precious materials such as aluminum from casings Copper from wiring or even gold
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from contact points can be recovered through the disassembly of old
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electronics this lessens the need for harvesting new raw materials from the
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finite supply of resources that is our planet Earth and number three even if
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you're not a tree hugger or whatever this should matter to you if you're a
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taxpayer is that it keeps these items out of landfills which means landfill
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spaces conserved lowering the cost of your local waste disposal services and
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in the long term even the cost associated with things like increased
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water filtration if any of these Metals end up in the water supply so then okay
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that sounds great lonus why aren't people doing this then great question
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and the answer is pretty simple it's timec consuming and tedious work to
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safely disassemble these products to the point where they can be reused in place
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of raw materials which means it's actually quite expensive to do so here
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in BC Canada we have what's called an environmental handling fee that gets
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charged on items that can be returned for free Recycling and while there's
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plenty of debate to be had about a mandatory fee at the time of purchase on
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all items I'll leave that to the philosophers but it's quite possible
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your region has a similar program that you can take advantage of and even if it
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doesn't you may discover some random and unexpected ways to dispose of this stuff
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as well Bottle Depot for example in my area are the return point for most
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E-Waste and Ikea of all places has their
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own instore drop off for household battery and light bulb recycling go
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figure and if your area doesn't have anything like this there are services
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like think recycle.com that do charge
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for the items that they can't get any value out of but can actually pay a
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bounty for some other items and they'll do things like refurbished toner
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cartridges and they'll accept and even pay by the pound for phones iPads and
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laptops even if they're completely nonfunctional all you have to do is put
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at least 15 items in a box and ship it off to them if you have enough of the
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acceptable items versus complete junk they're even willing to provide you with
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a free shipping label but wait if this video has inspired you
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to run out and responsibly dispose of your electronic waste there are a couple
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of things you should do first number one see if it still works hey we've got a
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local program called freegeek that is willing to take a lot of old computer
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and electronic stuff and distribute it to people and organizations that need it
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like I said at the beginning reuse is better than Recycling and number two
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while you're at it thoroughly wipe any personal data off of your devices before
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recycling them while most people don't
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even want to see that selfie sex tape you made that night after graduation or
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whatever anyone who does want to see it you probably don't want them seeing it
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so do your do diligence and on the subject of digital
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security it's fairly common knowledge
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among the techsavvy that even in a perfect world text-based passwords
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without additional authentication factors are just not very secure and
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there are a lot of companies out there trying a lot of different things to
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improve this which leads us to today's episode sponsor true Key by Intel
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notification on your personal smartphone
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and it always knows that you're you with multiactor authentication only a
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combination of being on a trusted device passing facial recognition and or
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swiping a notification on your smartphone can unlock your passwords and
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you can add extra factors to passwords you'd like to really lock down or a
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fewer for websites that you'd like to access faster and that don't hold any
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valuable information your try account syncs across all of your devices so be
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sure to download it to your phones tablets and computers you can find a
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link for where to try it out in the video description thanks for watching guys if
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