One of the great things about the holidays is getting to unwrap the newest and coolest devices. This year, 68 percent of U.S. adults planned to buy technology gifts, according to the Consumer Technology Association.
But getting new technology leads to an ongoing dilemma: What do you do with the old stuff?
Well, you can take advantage of trade-in or recycling programs it at Best Buy.
Try trade-in first
Some of your old gear might have some value and could be flipped for a Best Buy gift card. Visit www.BestBuy.com/tradein to see current trade-in offers and what your items might be worth. If you can’t trade it in, you can still recycle it.
Do’s and don’ts for recycling
Best Buy operates the largest retail collection program in the country, having collected and responsibly disposed of more than 1.5 billion pounds of electronics and appliances. And there’s no charge to recycle most items.
That means you can bring in your old cords, cables, VCRs — you name it. We’ll even take technology that hasn’t seen the light of day for decades, like 8-track tape players, ‘70s-era turntables and ‘80s-era boom boxes., And it doesn’t matter where you bought them.
We only charge a fee for recycling large appliances, and TVs and monitors, which are among the most expensive for us to manage through the recycling process.
- If you’re recycling a product with memory storage, be sure to wipe your personal data from its hard or flash drive. No time? No worries — we require our recycling partners to wipe all data from these items.
- Don’t bring in any products for recycling that are contaminated with food or infested with household pests.
- Make sure your products are intact. Equipment with broken pieces could cut someone who must handle it.
- Best Buy has a few limits on how much you can bring: Three non-CRT (cathode ray tube) items per household per day, and two TVs or monitors per household per day. (Because of state-level restrictions in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, we don’t accept TVs and computer monitors for recycling at our stores in these states.)
If you’re wondering whether you can recycle something, check our website at www.bestbuy.com/recycling.
What happens to the old stuff?
Our recycling partners determine if the material we send them can be repaired and resold, either as a whole unit or broken down for parts to repair other units. Material that can’t be fixed and resold can be turned into all kinds of things.
Plastics can be reused in products like toys, landscaping equipment, decking material and lawn furniture. Flat-panel TV glass can be repurposed into digital watch faces, or mixed to create road construction grading material. Some metals make their way back as car body panels and other auto components.
Keep bringing that old technology in and you’ll join us in collecting two billion pounds by 2020.
Learn more about recycling on BestBuy.com. For more news about Best Buy’s sustainability programs, click here or follow @BestBuyCSR.