I'm the lone IT person at a startup with about 70 employees, and I've been reflecting on how we handle our old hardware. We have around 40-50 laptops just sitting in storage—some are broken, while others are simply outdated. The finance team is pushing me to manage their disposal, but I'm not sure if we could actually get some money back from these devices or if we should just move on. I'm curious what other smaller companies are doing with their old devices, like MacBooks and ThinkPads that are 3 to 4 years old. Are you finding value in reselling old gear, or is it best to just cut our losses?
5 Answers
If you're looking for a way to dispose of laptops without the hassle, consider local charities that refurbish them for individuals in need. Just make sure you have a proper sanitization process in place, but this way you get a tax write-off without disposal fees.
Absolutely, you can get money back! We wipe our drives according to NIST standards, and a local IT vendor then picks up and processes the batch for resale. They handle everything and even send us reports and payment. Just make sure you choose a vendor with a solid reputation.
First things first, strip the hard drives. Get those destroyed and obtain a certificate of destruction. For the physical laptops, many local recyclers will pick them up for little to no cost. It's a simple and secure way to handle your e-waste and ensures you protect any data.
I usually pull out the SSD/HDD, RAM, and battery. I keep the SSDs and HDDs until I have enough to send for shredding. The RAM gets reused for upgrades on other devices. And I definitely take the batteries to hazardous waste recycling since they can be quite dangerous. Some places even have free e-waste recycling events.
Why bother disassembling it? Most corporate laptops have a Secure Erase option in the BIOS. Just use that—it's faster and still keeps the environment in mind as the devices can be reused.
Honestly, I doubt you're leaving much money on the table. Just find a good e-waste recycler who can provide you with proof of destruction for your data. If you have enough devices, they might even pick them up for free. Most likely, they’ll recycle or refurbish the good units anyway.
We recently had some older T480s and T14s that we sold to a reseller. We didn't do any fancy repairs or anything—just made sure they were working enough to sell. We got around 150 euros each, so it was totally worth it!
We still use our T480s, they're solid machines. Definitely worth trying to sell if they're in good condition!
I’d be cautious with selling devices to employees. In my experience, it opens a can of worms with support requests and complaints about the gear. Just doing a buyback can turn into more trouble than it’s worth.