Contributing Your E-Waste
Your Corps® is working with local corporates and businesses to intercept their redundant corporate machines from waste disposal, and are repurposing them to empower youth, educate and entertain; extending their service life - instead of contributing to the 97,000 tonnes buried in New Zealand each year.
Here is an example of what we are looking for!
What We Do With Your E-Waste
When we receive redundant computers, this provides an opportunity for our enthusiastic Corps SQUAD looking for work experience and internship to rally together at our workshop, in order to nuke all commputers to factory condition and juice them up for a new lease on life; becoming incorporated into our Corps® Core™ computer system; which then finds it's way into various other initiatives we provide, such as; educational programmes, deployed at our community gaming events for kids, helping out low-income households, utilized as Oranga Tamariki youth-mentoring resourcing, and also into schools across New Zealand for grass-roots e-sports infrastructure.
Promoting Your Businesses Involvement
We approach many businesses and corporates in New Zealand, many of which throw out dozens, to hundreds of computers, each year. However, many of these organisations (corporates in particular) often turn us away, due to: "it being much easier just to throw it all away/ship it overseas". It should be known to the public, that many corporates that we've interacted with unsuccessfully, choose instead to engage in this degree of wastefulness, but still proudly boast their 'environmental awareness' on their websites. Environmental sustainability has essentially become a buzz-word and a marketing-ploy, as opposed to contributing any real environmental change. This is likely a result of there being no awareness of what corporates and businesses are actually doing with their e-waste.
To combat this; we want to ensure that everyone knows about the positive contributions that Kiwi Corporations and Kiwi Businesses that ARE donating towards our initiatives. We are also creating a level of certification for New Zealand businesses, that they can proudly promote and display their positive involvement with our initiatives for kids, and the appropriate discarding of their e-waste.
What We Are Looking For
We are looking for Computer 'Workstations' - Essentially the whole 'Box' that a computer housed inside.
In particular; the age of the machine is important, therefore we are seeking machines that primarily have one of the Blue Stickers (pictured above) on it. Either Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7.
If your computer does not have one of these stickers on it, we can generally tell if it's a suitably aged by which operating system it has installed on it also. We are happy to take Desktop Computers that have:
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.
Do You Take Screens?
Due to the growing popularity of our services, we have found ourselves in a position where we have to be particular about the commodities we request, so as to be not inundated with too much stuff we can't use immediately, at-least until our operation can scale accordingly. With that being said, we are not the kind of folk to turn away perfectly good working screen! However; we have had to prioritize certain types over others.
Wide-Screen monitors such as these (16:9) we are happy to take!
4:3 monitors such as these we are unfortunately not in a position to be receiving great numbers of yet.
Do you take Laptops?
Unfortunately, at this stage, it is not cost effective for us to revitalize and refurbish laptops for the purposes of our initiatives, as the laptops we've been receiving require significant upgrades to play modern gaming experiences on, and are not really designed to be upgraded efficiently. We wish to primarily focus on Desktop Computers at this time; but we would like to eventually process laptops once our operation becomes more substantial.
HOWEVER
We have some awesome friends over at R.A.D (Recycle a Device) who are exclusively after laptops, who would be happy to take any laptops you have! We encourage you to get in touch with RAD regarding any laptops you might have!
What About Keyboards, Mice, Cables?
We are happy to take Keyboards, Mice, Cables etc provided that they are accompanied with Desktop Computers, helping corporates and businesses have a proper clean-out. The reason for this, is that we are receiving a lot more of this stuff than we can pair with actual working computers, so for the time being at-least, we have to prioritize working computers and their associated accessories, in order to develop this initiative effectively.
Collection Process
We have a number of collection methods available, ranging from contributions from individual members of the public, to businesses and corporates all over the South Island.
Individual Members Of The Public Wanting To Contribute.
Provided you have a machine that meets the above criteria you wish to donate, we have a range of Drop-Off-Zones that you may take your items down to, in order to donate to our cause.
Please Note: If you have more than 5 machines, please contact us, as we do not want to out-stay our welcome at our generous Drop-Zone partners!
So Far; We have Drop-Zones in the following regions:
•Invercargill
•Gore
•Balclutha
If you wish to donate an item, please contact us, and we can provide further instructions!
Businesses or Corporates Wanting To Contribute.
Provided you have at least 10 machines that meet the above criteria you wish to donate, we are able to arrange full-turn-key shipping from your site. This will involve a Shipping Pallet being sent to you, which you can stack the computers on, resulting in a freight company coming to collect!
Alternatively, if you live in the Southland, Otago or Clutha Districts, Your Corps is happy to come personally collect, provided you have enough machines to collect!
If you less than 5 computers you wish to contribute, you can utilize our Drop Zones mentioned above for our public contributors!
What About My Private Data?
Concerns Regarding Data Protection? We do NOT require the computers Storage Drives, which stores your private data. Storage Drives can effortlessly be removed by your IT department (or by us) prior to collection. If we discover any hard drives in any donated computers, you can trust us to destroy them immediately, by drilling half-a-dozen holes straight through the Drive, which is then recycled appropriately!
What Do You Do With The Stuff You Can't Use?
Let's face it. Some of the stuff we get can be beyond repair. If that's the case, for now; we have partnered up with various other recycling initiatives to help use effectively recycle of the things we can't repurpose. However, the resulting effectiveness for them to do so is accelerated by the fact that our SQUAD has already separated and stripped everything accordingly, drastically reducing the intensive nature of effective electronic recycling.
Our Goals For The Future
Our goal is to eventually establish the largest E-Waste processing facility in New Zealand, and employ an army of enthusiastic teenagers eager to earn pocket money and pursue a career in technology, but are instead finding it extremely hard to find any kind of work. Here, we will get them trained up to strip-computers, organize an endless inventory of components, troubleshoot computers, build functional computers and operate the plant under supervision.