Repair, Refurbish, or Reuse? 4 Sustainable Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Life Responsibly
Determining what to do with company IT equipment or your personal laptop at its end of life can be a challenge. Throwing it in the bin contributes to e-waste—adding easily avoidable emissions to your business’s carbon footprint. Here are four ways to pass on outdated equipment responsibly, minimising environmental impacts.
Why reuse or recycle a laptop responsibly?
Every laptop has a carbon footprint, not just when it’s in use, but it also includes the embodied carbon footprint of its manufacture and the carbon footprint associated with its disposal.
How we choose to deal with devices at the end of their life can have a massive environmental and social impact.
From toxic waste to missed opportunities for reuse, here’s why it’s essential to act responsibly and how different approaches compare.
Discarding: The Most Environmentally Costly Choice
When laptops are simply landfilled or incinerated without recovering materials, the environmental consequences are significant. Toxic substances like lead, mercury, and cadmium can leach into the soil, air, and water over time, creating long-term ecological and health risks.
Beyond pollution, there's a huge missed opportunity. Valuable materials and embodied energy (emissions tied up in the original production) are lost. On average, discarding a laptop results in an estimated 200–400 kg CO₂e emissions.
The world’s generation of electronic waste is rising five times faster than documented e-waste recycling. That’s enough for 1.5 million trucks carrying 62 billion kg of e-waste, or enough trucks to wrap around the Equator.
1. Repair: The First Line of Defence Against E-Waste
We’re often quick to replace damaged or older equipment rather than investigate repair options. Repairing minor issues such as a cracked screen or a slowing battery is often more cost-effective than replacing a laptop and can significantly extend its lifespan.
The 2024 EU Right to Repair Directive, legislation intending to make the repair process easier, will come into force in mid-2026. However, many companies already offer repairs on their products, and independent IT repair services exist across Ireland and the UK.
2. Refurbishing: Simple Repairs, Big Impact
Refurbishing involves repairing or upgrading key components like the battery or hard drive to make a laptop usable again. While cosmetic wear (like scratches or pressure marks) isn’t usually addressed, this option drastically cuts emissions with minimal material input.
Refurbished laptops carry a much lower footprint—around 20–40 kg CO₂e per device, mostly from parts and energy used in the repair process. For each laptop processed for reuse, 316kg of CO2 and 190,000 litres of water are saved versus producing a brand new laptop.
Older laptops can also be converted and retained for alternative uses. They can act as additional monitors to desktops, transfer software to Linux from Windows, which requires less operating power for basic uses or be turned into network-attached storage (NAS) systems to increase the storage capacity of larger computers. All of these extend the life of the hardware and can delay disposal.
3. Remanufacturing: Rebuilding Tech for a Circular Future
Remanufacturing takes things further by disassembling and restoring the laptop using a combination of reused, repaired, and new parts. The process is more resource-intensive than refurbishing, but still far greener than producing new.
The estimated carbon footprint is between 20–100 kg CO₂e per laptop, depending on how many new parts are needed. While it's a bigger intervention, it still offers significant carbon savings over disposal or replacement, and results in a product that meets original performance specs.
Image Source: Sustainability Assessment of Electronic Waste RemanufacturingRemanufactured laptops produce 6-7% CO₂e/laptop compared to a brand new device
4. Donate: Maximum Impact, Minimum Effort
One of the most impactful—and often overlooked—actions is donating. Giving a laptop to a charity, school, or non-profit can extend its life with very little environmental cost. In fact, emissions are usually limited to 5–20 kg CO₂e per device, mostly from transport and light use.
If the laptop is still functional, consider donating it to schools, nonprofits, or individuals in need. Even slightly outdated devices can be refurbished to serve basic functions for others. Computers 4 Charity and Rehab Recycle are great examples of organisations upcycling tech for a good cause.
Donation can save up to 150 kg CO₂e per laptop, making it the most carbon-efficient and socially impactful choice. It reduces e-waste, supports digital inclusion, and avoids unnecessary production of new devices.
Many manufacturers and retailers offer take-back or trade-in programs where they responsibly recycle old electronics or refurbish them for resale. Other companies solely operate on computer refurbishment/remanufacturing, including DELLand Circular Computing.