Thinking about recycling your laptop? This is what happens to your old devices

SINGAPORE: Recycling a laptop may just be a matter of putting it in an e-waste bin for most people, but the end-of-life process is much more drawn out and labour-intensive for METech Recycling Asia. 
The recycling firm dismantles the devices into materials that can be recycled and those that cannot be recycled, in a bid to lower the amount of waste entering Singapore’s only landfill. 
Speaking at the 2024 International E-Waste Day event at Westgate on Sunday (Oct 13), Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Amy Khor said that the total amount of e-waste collected has increased, from 3,500 tonnes in February 2022 to more than 22,300 tonnes in September this year.
Collection points have also increased from 300 to around 870 across Singapore, at locations such as shopping malls, supermarkets and commercial buildings. 
Dr Khor said that data security remained concern for those looking to recycle e-waste.
“The reason that people given is … (they are) worried about data security because … a lot of us (tend) to have a lot of personal and confidential information in our handphones, for instance, in our laptops and so on, and you are very worried that this will leak out,” she said.
She noted that under the law, all data-bearing devices that are sent for recycling at licensed recyclers must undergo data sanitisation and physical dismantling.
In 2018, a National Environment Agency (NEA) study found that Singapore generates about 60,000 tonnes of e-waste a year – equivalent to each person in Singapore throwing about 73 mobile phones, or about 11kg of e-waste. 
The NEA introduced a regulated e-waste management system in 2021 to ensure the proper collection and handling of e-waste, including the extraction of valuable resources from e-waste.
It appointed ALBA E-waste Smart Recycling to collect regulated consumer electrical and electronic waste across Singapore for proper treatment and recycling on behalf of producers from Jul 1, 2021, to Jun 30, 2026. 
Dr Khor said that ALBA will be offering free doorstep collection of bulky e-waste, such as refrigerators, air-conditioners, washing machines, dryers and televisions. This will be available for all households.
METech is a firm that receives e-waste from ALBA for processing. 
At its Tuas facility, the company deals with e-waste like laptops and electric vehicle batteries, breaking them down for further processing. 
The company showed the media how it also sanitises data from laptops. Sustainability and recycling consultant Vincent Quck said erasing data from devices goes a long way in giving consumers and clients the confidence to recycle their laptops. 
When the firm receives laptops, they are weighed in batches, with the result recorded.
Since laptops store sensitive information, METech employees take the devices to a secure room for disassembly, which takes about 10 minutes. 
The secured room is equipped with an alarm that notifies the operations team when doors are opened, so that staff can monitor who enters and exits.
The room also has scores of closed-circuit television cameras to track where the devices are.
Within this room, two staff members wearing protective goggles and gloves are equipped with the tools to take apart the laptops on tables.
This includes the tedious and precise process of unscrewing minuscule screws that hold small parts together. 
They extract the laptops’ hard disk drive or solid-state drive, where information is stored.
Hard disk drives are fed into a degaussing machine, which takes less than 10 seconds to wipe the drive.
Degaussing is when a very strong magnetic field is applied to disrupt the device’s magnetic parts. This irreversibly erases the data. 
As an added measure, hard disk drives are subsequently crushed by another machine, where they are destroyed within half a minute. 
When asked why both degaussing and crushing are needed, Mr Quck said degaussing addresses data privacy concerns, while destroying the hard disk assures clients that the data is irretrievable.
“When we deal with consumer products, we have to go through degaussing, we have to go through the crusher … we have to comply with NEA regulations, that’s one thing (and) also to gain the trust of members of the public to do e-waste recycling,” said Mr Quck. 
Solid-state drives are fed into a shredder as they do not store data magnetically.
Broken hard disk drives are further segregated into mixed waste, metal and printed circuit board components. 
The rest of the laptop parts are also separated, crushed and sent for processing elsewhere.
All these parts are weighed and the numbers are collated as part of the regulatory process.
“The processing (will result in) different materials, such as plastic, metal, copper, printed circuit boards, or even general waste,” said Mr Quck.
“So all these weights, I need to compile together to match whatever we bring in so that we can tell NEA that we do all the due diligence (in segregating the device into materials).”
While METech helps to sanitise data from laptops, consumers should still back up their data and perform a factory reset before sending their laptops to be recycled, said Mr Quck. 
They should also be aware that e-waste should not be placed in blue recycling bins at housing block void decks, as they would then be treated as contaminated waste and may ultimately be incinerated, he added.
Devices left out in the sun can also malfunction and present a danger to waste collectors. Instead, consumers can place their old laptops into one of ALBA’s many e-waste bins around Singapore. 
When asked about the challenges of recycling a laptop, Mr Quck said not all laptops are designed to be recycled.
“As a recycler, what we want to do is actually to dismantle the product … into different materials, so the process has to be efficient so that it will reduce costs on our side to do the dismantling,” said Mr Quck.
However, some of these products use glue to stick components together, making dismantling more difficult. Others needed special tools to pry open, delaying the process. 
Mr Quck said the firm receives about 30 per cent more e-waste towards the start and end of each year. That is because consumers normally buy new devices and recycle their old ones after receiving their bonuses.
Despite being in this line of business, Mr Quck discourages recycling in favour of cutting down on consumption. 
“I don’t encourage recycling, to be honest. I encourage reducing the e-waste. I think that we do not need to have a lot of devices, because the more you buy, the more you will waste.”