Best Buy Will Pick Up Your Tech Recycling, But It’s Not Cheap

Best Buy Will Pick Up Your Tech Recycling, But It’s Not Cheap

The company’s Standalone Haul-Away service allows customers to schedule a pickup for a maximum of two large items and unlimited small items, like video game consoles, hair dryers, and most computer and audio accessories. While there are some things Best Buy won’t take (it will somehow accept a broom but not most musical instruments or countertop appliances), it’s suddenly made recycling old tech far more convenient than the DIY option, which can be a problem for those with small cars, a lot of stairs, or disabilities.

Of course, making your life easier comes at a steep price. Standalone Haul-Away costs $200, regardless of whether you have one or two large items to recycle or whether you plan on giving up any small tech. Best Buy also won’t help you disconnect, dismount, or disassemble the items you’re recycling, despite Geek Squad otherwise existing to do those very things. It won’t pick up from businesses or other organizations, either, having apparently been formulated for individual consumers only.

Best Buy Will Pick Up Your Tech Recycling, But It’s Not Cheap

Standalone Haul-Away complements Best Buy’s existing recycling services, one of which hauls away your old tech for $30 only after you’ve purchased a replacement item. The other program incentivizes people to drop off up to three items a day at the company’s brick-and-mortar locations by offering gift cards for certain tech. Much like Apple’s refurbishing-slash-recycling program, people can estimate their items’ trade-in value online before making a trip to the store.

Once Best Buy receives old tech, it ships it off to one of its recycling partners: Regency Technologies or Electronic Recyclers International. These companies wipe any remaining data off applicable devices, then decide if the item should be repaired, repurposed, or recycled. Repurposable and recyclable items are shredded into materials that can later be used to build airplanes, fiber optic cables, or new electronics, among other things. Fixable items go through the repair process and are resold as refurbished goods, hence the trade-in incentive.

Best Buy claims its recycling programs have helped keep more than two billion pounds of electronics and appliances out of landfills since the start of its recycling programs in 2009.

Continue reading

Intel Launches AMD Radeon-Powered CPUs
Intel Launches AMD Radeon-Powered CPUs

Intel's new Radeon+Kaby Lake hybrid CPUs are headed for store shelves. Here's how the SKUs break down and what you need to know.

SpaceX Launches ‘Better Than Nothing’ Starlink Beta
SpaceX Launches ‘Better Than Nothing’ Starlink Beta

Those lucky few who have gotten invitations to try the service will have to pay a hefty up-front cost, and the speeds aren't amazing. Still, it's a new generation of satellite internet.

Hubble Examines 16 Psyche, the Asteroid Worth $10,000 Quadrillion
Hubble Examines 16 Psyche, the Asteroid Worth $10,000 Quadrillion

Researchers just finished an ultraviolet survey of 16 Psyche, the ultra-valuable asteroid NASA plans to visit in 2026.

Intel Launches New Xe Max Mobile GPUs for Entry-Level Content Creators
Intel Launches New Xe Max Mobile GPUs for Entry-Level Content Creators

Intel has launched a new consumer, mobile GPU — but it's got a very specific use-case, at least for now.