eWaste Recyling with Apple in Aus

Now this was a pretty cool thing. 🙂

It’s fair to say that over the past years, myself and my family have managed to amass a fair amount of computer… crap. XD Headphones have broken, computers have been upgraded, LCD monitors have died, somehow we ended up with 7 keyboards, a printer older than me; the list goes on. XD

It’s really hard to just throw this stuff out though. We’re a pretty environmental bunch in my house (at least, I like to think we are) and we’re all well aware of what happens if this stuff hits landfill. So we’ve been hanging onto this stuff, and while sometimes Perth does have eWaste drives, I haven’t seen one in over year.

Not wanting to REALLY have to pay to have this stuff recycled, I checked out Apple’s recycling program to see if there was anything they’d be able to do. And ‘lo and behold, they did. 😀

Turns out Apple’s policy towards recycling changes on a per-region basis, but here’s how it goes down in Australia. If you purchase a new Mac from Apple, within 3 months of that purchase, you are eligible to have any of your old computer hardware recycled for absolutely free! And funnily enough, I recently made such a purchase. XD

Anyway, the process was really simple. After providing my new Mac’s serial number (just to prove I really do have one XD), all I had to do is fill out a form on the Recycling Program page that outlined all of the hardware that I wanted to dispose of.

About a day later, I was contacted by telephone by an Apple employee to confirm the best pickup time. After agreeing to Wednesday, all I had to do was place all of the hardware on my front porch and that was it! When I got home tonight, the hardware had been picked up; no fuss no muss!

Either way, I’m really happy about this. Proper eWaste disposal facilities are still near and far in Australia, and Apple is doing an amazing service with this program. 😀

But yeah. If you just bought a Mac, and happen to have a pile of broken technology lying around, send it to Apple! 😀