Can Old or Broken Computers or Electronics be Worth Money?

Every individual and certainly every business has electronics stashed or squirreled away somewhere. Some of it may be of use someday—though you may want to mitigate your risk in that area—and others are just plain old, broken, or both. What can you do with them? At Sadoff, we’re here to tell you that you should recycle them! Not only is it the best thing you can do for the sake of the environment, but there might be a monetary reason why this is the ideal option too. Can old or broken computers or electronics be worth money? Sometimes the answer is yes.

What Dictates if Old Electronics Are Worth Money?

We have to be honest here, there are a ton of variables that dictate the recycling value of even a single piece of electronics. This isn’t like typical recycling where you can easily sort between glass, plastic, paper, and aluminum and for the most part they all have their own prices.

Comparatively, electronics are far more complicated. They use a variety of metals and materials, some quite valuable and other quite dangerous or toxic and they are all tightly packed together making them hard to separate. Let’s get into all the variables:

• Composition of Electronics—Every piece of electronics is different in what materials it uses, in what amounts, and how recoverable they are. We can usually get a pretty close estimate based on the type of the device such as a cell phone, but even that requires a lot of expertise.

• Price Fluctuations—The prices of metals and other recycled materials can fluctuate rapidly and even in unpredictable ways. This means a recycler incurs some risk that the value of the material will not drop before the electronics can be processed and recycled.

• Toxic Materials—The previous two problems are further exacerbated by the presence of toxic materials in nearly all electronics. These materials often include mercury, arsenic, and others and each requires special handling processes. This takes time and costs money.

• Sorting Labor—This doesn’t apply to all scenarios, and typically depends on the client but in some cases, we get electronics all in a jumble and sorting electronics also includes disassembly and further sorting. For this reason, some clients choose to sort electronics before their arrival at our facility. The choice is entirely up to the client, but it will affect the costs.

What Electronics Can You Recycle?

Are E-Recyclers Able to Pay Money for Old Electronics?

After all that, it’s probably easy to understand how much more difficult e-recycling is than normal recycling, and we haven’t even gone into the specifics of processes. Even with all that though, there are often cases where e-recycling electronics can be profitable for our clients. Our prices do change with the markets and you can see our current pricing here, but for the most up-to-date and reliable pricing, it’s best to give us a call for a quote.

What Makes Sadoff Different?

When you compare us to other e-recyclers, we have a lot of differentiating factors. We are highly certified, ITAR registered, and we have locations throughout the Midwest that allow us to provide service nationwide. That’s not all. We also have Sadoff Iron & Metal as a sister company which means we can take metals and materials that most other e-recyclers won’t be interested in.

Categorized in: E-Recycle