Refurbished electronics help achieve sustainability goals within organisations, but they’re also a great way for individual consumers to make greener purchasing choices.
Going green is a seemingly Herculean effort, but every step towards mitigating e-waste generation is a step in the right direction. The three R’s can help achieve this, and purchasing refurbished electronics rather than new can satisfy one, two, or three of the R’s.
WHAT ARE THE THREE R’S?
In the waste management hierarchy, governments and institutions around the world seek to come up with ways to prioritise waste management. There are numerous ways of classifying waste, but a particularly useful and helpful way to look at it is with the three R’s:
- Reduce: prevent or avoid waste in the first place;
- Reuse: repurpose, refurbish, and/or remarket items that would otherwise be classified as waste;
- Recycle: disassemble products into their constituent components for reassembly into new products.
Electronic devices can (and should) be disposed of with the least possible impact to the environment, which can be achieved by following one or more of the three R’s.
HOW DO REFURBISHED ELECTRONICS FROM WISETEK STORE FULFIL ALL THREE R’S?
Reduce
Refurbished electronics from Wisetek Store create new supply from what would otherwise be e-waste. The demand for consumer electronics is always high, so providing a supply of high-quality refurbished electronics can lessen the need to purchase brand-new devices.
Reuse
Purchasing refurbished electronics can reduce demand for new devices, and by definition is always a form of reuse, since refurbished devices are just that - reused electronics.
What should matter to you, the customer, is that a refurbished device is indeed refurbished and not simply a used device with potential flaws or defects. Wisetek Store professionally refurbishes all products and remarkets them with their condition clearly stated, as well as 12-month warranties (standard) and optional extended warranties.
RECYCLE
All electronics listed on Wisetek Store are either refurbished to an ‘as new’ standard or, in some cases, are new and have been simply removed from the box (sometimes still left in the original packaging). This means that they have all been, in a sense, recycled from what would otherwise be e-waste and refurbished to an operational state.
Perhaps an old device was sold due to a malfunctioning display screen. Rather than dispose of it improperly, Wisetek Store instead replaces the screen and renders the device perfectly usable again.
HOW SUSTAINABLE ARE REFURBISHED ELECTRONICS?
Refurbished electronics from reputable resellers such as Wisetek Store are 100% sustainable. That sounds great, but why does that matter? Putting things into perspective, e-waste is a far bigger problem than many people may believe.
According to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), e-waste has grown globally from 44.4 Mt in 2014 (6.4 kg per capita) to 53.6 Mt in 2019 (7.3 kg per capita). From that 53.6 Mt, it’s estimated that only 17% (9.3 Mt) was properly recycled and the remaining 82.6% (44.3 Mt) simply goes undocumented.
BUYING REFURBISHED IS BUYING GREENER
Buying refurbished electronics simultaneously reduces e-waste, reuses electronics, and helps to recycle otherwise redundant e-waste into valuable devices perfectly suited for home and business use. Refurbished is greener and more sustainable than buying new, but not all refurbished products are the same. In fact, many resellers may even market used products as refurbished when they simply haven’t been.
BUY SUSTAINABLE, BUY REFURBISHED: BUY FROM WISETEK STORE
Find your next laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or other great device from Wisetek Store. Our products are often 50-80% cheaper than buying new, but they’re also far greener and more sustainable.
Wisetek Store carries premium refurbished electronics to an ‘as new’ standard, including tablets, monitors, MacBooks, laptops, and much more.
If you are looking for a refurbished laptop in the UK with local shipping costs be sure to visit our UK store, Wisetek Store UK.
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Should I Buy A Refurbished Chromebook?
How To Reduce E-Waste When Buying A Laptop