Every second, 127 new devices are connected to the internet. Technology is growing at an unprecedented rate, and so is e-waste.

Today, it’s nearly impossible to operate a business without at least one electronic device. Planned obsolescence has contributed to the mountains of e-waste created each year, with projected totals reaching 74.7 million tons by 2030.

Devices become outdated or are perceived as obsolete and discarded for new ones, only for the new ones to be dumped in another few years. This linear, “take, make and dispose” production method is slowly killing the Earth.

What Devices Are Businesses Recycling? 

Over half the electronics recycled at Sunnking are from businesses. Here are the top five items companies are recycling today.‍

Printers

The average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper per year – the equivalent of one tree. That adds up to about $725 annually. We won’t even discuss the amount of time an employee spends with a printer or fax machine at work. That’s a lot of lost money, time, and trees.

Going paperless has almost become the norm these days, and there are numerous advantages of doing so. Without the need for paper, printers are a dying breed of office electronics. It’s no surprise printers are the number one business electronic we recycle.

Desktop PCs

Up until the Covid-19 pandemic, only 6% of workers worked primarily from home. Your work computer rarely moved anywhere unless you decided to wipe your desk down. Desktop PCs are fast, durable, secure, easy to repair, and less expensive than laptops, which is why you’ll find them in virtually any office cubicle.

As businesses shut down during the pandemic, employees had no choice but to work from home. Desktop PCs went unused and were traded in for a more convenient and portable computer - a laptop. Many companies now offer the option to stay remote or provide a hybrid home/office workweek. 

Portability isn’t one of a desktop PC’s strong suits. Many businesses have elected to recycle them instead.

PC Monitors

You can’t use a desktop PC without a monitor and vice versa. Monitors can give you some extra screen real estate hooked up to some laptops, but that would negate the portability factor. Often, when a desktop PC is recycled, a monitor won’t be far behind.

Medical Equipment & Miscellaneous Devices

Medical, lab, and small, business-related devices are another large portion of what we receive from businesses.

Safety and health are number one when it comes to proper medical equipment. Correctly functioning devices could mean the difference between life and death. When medical equipment breaks, the options are to repair or replace it. If the repair costs are too high or parts are unavailable, replacing them with new equipment makes more sense.

Biomeds are bio-medical repair technicians that are qualified to fix on-site medical equipment. Medical manufactures haven’t made it easy for them, even during a worldwide pandemic. In a survey conducted by US PIRG, 80% of biomeds have equipment that couldn’t be serviced because manufacturers denied access to parts and manuals.

We enjoy seeing medical equipment recycled because it allows us to provide replacement parts or repairable machines to authorized resellers.

Laptops

With millions of employees and students switching to remote work and learning, computer sales have surged, generating $203 million in 2020. That’s a 13% increase from the year prior and the most significant jump since 2014.

Laptops are easily portable and allow an employee or student to work from virtually anywhere. That said, they are also more difficult and expensive to upgrade and repair. 

Laptops often offer excellent resale value. At Sunnking, we do our best to repair them for resell before breaking the components down for recycling.

Conclusion

Selling refurbished is always our number one priority. It contributes to a circular economy, where no new resources are needed to make or remake a device. Reselling and recycling electronics tackles significant environmental issues such as global warming, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Help create a more sustainable world and recycle your business electronics with an R2 certified recycler like Sunnking. Contact us today, and we’ll help you get on track to becoming a sustainable business.

Why Recycling Electronics Matters

Electronics contain precious metals such as silver, gold, and palladium. Instead of taking more resources from the Earth, we can mine them from recycled electronics instead. “Urban mining” protects Earth’s natural resources and cuts back on emissions caused by mining them.

On the other hand, electronics also contain toxic heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium. When not appropriately recycled, these heavy metals leak into the ground and the atmosphere causing severe health and environmental problems.

It’s important to recycle your electronics properly with a certified R2 recycler, like Sunnking, to make sure devices are safely recycled.