If you are looking to recycle your laptop and scrap it for some extra money there are a few things to keep in mind and a few ways to make the maximum profit at the scrap yard. Laptops don’t have a very long life if you are using them as your everyday computer, on average they last to their full potential for about 5 years.
Taking apart a laptop will not be worth your time and energy if you only have a few. You will actually lose money if you take apart one laptop for scrap. So if you have over 10 or so laptops for scrap, it can be worth your time to separate and scrap them. Once you are ready to scrap it there are some things to do to prepare it for the scrap yard.
6 Steps For Scrapping A Laptop
- Find the right yard. Some scrap yards don’t accept any form of e-scrap (electronic scrap) so be sure to check the iScrap App for current materials that yards in your area accept.
- Once you have found a yard that does buy scrap laptops check with them about their procedures. Some may not allow you to scrap the battery with them so you may have to remove it and recycle it elsewhere. If they do accept the laptops with the battery, ask if they buy them separately.
- The majority of a laptop is plastic but if you open up the bottom of a laptop you can pull out the harddrive, mother board, CPU chip, low-grade disc drive board, RAM boards, and small motor from the fan.
- If you laptop has a charger that you can no longer use, be sure to scrap that too. The wire can be classified with your insulated wire and if there is a small transformer on the end you can cut that and throw it in your transformer pile.
- Once you have removed these items the guts of the laptop should be separated and sold separately at the scrap yard. They all have separate values so be sure to check with your yard so you know what to expect.
- If you are interested in destroying the information on your hard drive the proper way, ask your scrap yard if they have certificates of destruction. Or you can take matter into your own “hands” and smash it with a hammer.
Suggested Reading: How To Scrap A Computer Tower
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