This FREE service is available to households and small businesses looking to recycle responsibly once their information and communications technology (ICT) equipment is unwanted or has reached the end of its useful life. If you are a corporate business, please contact your waste and recycling service provider for professional e-waste recycling services, and/or your local council for further advice on local e-waste recycling options available.

Households and small businesses can take the accepted e-waste items to one of our drop-off locations and hand it over to onsite staff managing the programme. Our team and recycling service providers will take care of the rest.

This is a no-cost service directly funded by TechCollect NZ’s members from Apple, Canon NZ, Dell Technologies New Zealand, HP New Zealand, Logitech New Zealand, Microsoft and The Warehouse Group.

No accepted e-waste items recovered through TechCollect NZ’s pilot programme is donated, reused or resold. All e-waste is broken down and responsibly recycled to achieve the highest material recovery outcomes. Please note, it is the pilot programme user’s responsibility to clear data from their electronic devices prior to dropping it off for recycling. Pilot programme users can protect their personal information by securely and permanently wiping the data on their device(s). For more information and helpful guidance about how to do this, go to: http://techcollect.nz/about-us/delete-your-data/

We accept and recycle the following items:

• Personal and laptop computers and associated cables
• Tablets, notebooks and palmtops
• Computer monitors and parts (e.g. internal hard drives and CD drives)
• Computer peripherals and accessories (e.g. mice, keyboards, web cameras, USBs and modems)
• Printers, scanners, and multi-function devices
• Cameras and video cameras

Please note, excluded products include televisions, whitegoods, consumer electronics, loose batteries, toner and ink cartridges.

Mobile phones, mobile phone charges and cables continue to be recycled through RE:mobile; a cellular phone recycling scheme available at Noel Leeming stores nationwide (and other locations). Visit the RE:mobile website to learn more: remobile.org.nz | New Zealand’s only accredited mobile phone recycling programme.

If your unwanted device is a laptop, Chromebook or tablet and it still has some life left in it, TechCollect NZ encourages device owners to contact the Recycle A Device (RAD) programme – a not-for-profit organisation who collect and refurbish old laptops and tablets which are then given to people who need them; while providing local high school students with the skills to diagnose and repair these devices.

For more info on the RAD programme and their mission to close the digital divide in Aotearoa, please see this article (Bridging the digital divide with a RAD idea – TechCollect) and visit their website: Recycle a Device.

All e-waste recovered through TechCollect NZ pilot programme is recycled by local recyclers who recover and recirculate as much material as possible. However, where our local recycling partners are unable to treat certain e-waste components due to recycling capability limitations e.g., printed circuit boards, or where there are limited end markets for recovered resources e.g., plastics, they are exported under permit for environmentally sound treatment or further processing offshore.

• Metals: All processed in New Zealand
• Non-leaded glass: Processed in New Zealand
• Printer and computer plastic: Sorted into polymer type, granulated and then exported to Malaysia (HIPS from cartridges and printers may be processed in China)
• PCBs: Exported to Japan for processing
• Lithium batteries: Exported to South Korea for processing
• CRT and flat screen monitors: First stage recycling performed by Abilities group in Auckland. Plastic is exported to Malaysia for processing and leaded glass is exported to Nyrstar in Australia for processing. Metals, clean glass and mercury tubes are processed in New Zealand.