Recyling Computers

50Twuncle

I work at a school that is trying to find a company to buy about 300 old but still useable computers - does anyone know of such a company in SW England ?
Rather than just donating them to charity - financial conditions mean that we would prefer to get "some" money for them......

molerat

Unlikely, you will probably have to pay someone to take them. My local computer recycling charity charge to take them. Have you had new ones installed, what idiot arranged that contract then ?

MyOnlyPost

I cannot help directly but I had a conversation with someone a couple of years ago about faulty electronics. He suggested finding avenues to sell them overseas to third world countries where they would be repaired cheaply and received gratefully. Apparently there are companies already doing this but my employer didn't look into it any further as we didn't have the volume to make this work. With 300 computers it may be viable and as well as getting some money for them you would be helping out those less fortunate

cootuk

I would say the school has a duty of care under WEE regulations and even Data Protection Act for the correct disposal of these, including wiping/destroying the hard drives.
300 is a significant number and the cost of disposal at end of life should have been considered by your IT people when buying the new computers.

As you are a school, does your council have some sort of arrangement already in place?

The_ICT_Engineer

Take them apart. You could sale the cpu's and other bits on ebay. I sold a AMD 3800 for £26 and a 4 year old motherboard for £20, DDR2 1GB Dimms go for £10 to £15. You tend to recover more money selling the parts than the whole machine.

Taking a machine apart is a good way to teach inner workings of a computer to a student. I did this a few years back when running a college IT department.

http://awarefiners.com give a good price for dead circuit board's,memory and cpu's. They also buy hard drives and supply Certificates of destruction. They offer free collection

Everything is refined to recover precious metals Your average circuit-board contains a range of precious and high value metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Iridium and Copper) ,Your average Integrated circuits contain gold not just the pins, But inside the IC as well. Between 33% and 25% of the weight of a Central processing unit is gold. The connectors in the sockets are gold or sliver plated.

Even the cases can be sold to a scrap yard for the value of the steel.

Only problem you may have is getting rid of CRT Monitors. It costs around £15 to £20 to process each one.

50Twuncle

cootuk wrote: »

I would say the school has a duty of care under WEE regulations and even Data Protection Act for the correct disposal of these, including wiping/destroying the hard drives.
300 is a significant number and the cost of disposal at end of life should have been considered by your IT people when buying the new computers.

As you are a school, does your council have some sort of arrangement already in place?

Thanks - but we are an academy (out of LEA control)

forgotmyname

What are the computers actual specs?

scheming_gypsy

Sell them to parents. Where i'm working at the minute we have a surplus of old machines due to upgrades.
We're wiping the hard drives and they're flying out of the door at £10 a shot.

cootuk

This link may help..no association
http://www.thegrid.org.uk/info/traded/sitss/computers/pc_disposal.shtml

Kelvinb_2

21Twinkle wrote: »

I work at a school that is trying to find a company to buy about 300 old but still useable computers - does anyone know of such a company in SW England ?
Rather than just donating them to charity - financial conditions mean that we would prefer to get "some" money for them......

Hi Twinkle,

Yes you are correct I work for one such company, we purchase end of life IT equipment and provide clients with a "buy back value" for their old equipment. Include into our offer is full data removal and all required documents regarding the WEEE directives. Please PM me for further information or a chat

Many thanks,

Kelvin

Owain_Moneysaver

21Twinkle wrote: »

I work at a school that is trying to find a company to buy about 300 old but still useable computers - does anyone know of such a company in SW England ?

You could turn them into 10 30-desk computer labs using Terminal Services software and a few servers.

http://opensourceschools.org.uk/system-tools/gnulinux/linux/ltsp

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3124052951.html?regen=yes&display=yes

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=452771