About Computer Recycling Edinburgh

Computer Recycling Edinburgh was established to help both businesses and private consumers recycle their old technology to reduce landfill and to help give their old tech a second life. Rather than a traditional recycler that shreds e-waste, we will test, repair and upgrade the computers we receive and do our best to find them new homes, extended their useful life and helping reduce the need for new items from having to be manufactured and bought.

We understand that both consumers and businesses are looking to recycle their old laptops or desktop computers when they upgrade but that shouldn’t mean that your old technology ends up in the bin!

How We Recycle

Rather than just send everything to the shredder, we do our best to repair and upgrade as many items as possible. Sending e-waste for shredding is our last option and we try to avoid it as much as possible. Last year we achieved our best result to date, recycling 97.5% of the items we received, giving them new life and preventing them from ending up in landfill.

All items we receive go though a similar process although there are some slight variations for business and consumers.

When items arrive with us the first thing we do is wipe the hard disks. If you’re recycling a laptop or a PC with us the hard drive will be removed and put into a blanking machine that will erase the data by writing over it again and again. The exact process used will depend on the disk but for example, a privately donated laptop will have it’s data overwritten 3 times before having an operating system installed and a business laptop will have its data overwritten 5 times before being used again.

Recycling and Waste

Whilst the hard disks are being erased the laptops or computers will be tested. We’ll PAT test each device and also stress test it, check it’s operating temperatures and diagnose any problems with the device. We’ll replace broken screen, replace missing keys then upgrade the machine so it can run the most current operating system.

Waste is generated during this phase and we try to minimise this as much as possible. If you recycle a laptop with a smashed screen with us we will replace the smashed screen but we will not repair the faulty screen and this will be shredded. Similarly, a hard disk that doesn’t work or reports fatal errors during the blanking process will not be repaired and will be shredded. This is done for security reasons and if we can’t erases the data with absolute certainty an items will be shredded even though this causes waste.

A second life for your laptop

Once we’re repaired the faults, upgraded your old machine as much as possible and fully tested it it should go on being used for years to come. We try to ensure that machines leaving us average a new life of 5 years. Some machines will last longer, and sadly some less time as operating systems become more demanding but this extended life reduces the need for thousands of new machines to be created, reduces thousands of tonnes of waste and provides low price/ free machines to those who need them the most.

All the equipment we receive is recycled here in the UK. We don’t not ship any items abroad for recycling.