Donor FAQ
What happens to my stuff after I donate it?
Free Geek is committed to prioritizing reuse over recycling, therefore all incoming hardware is evaluated for reusability. Much of what we receive from donors like yourself can be reused in some capacity and then redistributed to the community. Hardware that is broken or deemed obsolete is disassembled and separated into its basic components. FREE GEEK then finds a local industrial recycler to process the materials.
FREE GEEK chooses business partnerships with companies that we are confident are handling the materials in an environmentally responsible manner. Here's a list of some of those partnerships:
- Schnitzer Steel
- Denton Plastics
- Total Reclaim
- ReCellular
- Metro Recycling
What about hard drives?
At FREE GEEK, we will never boot from a hard drive before it has been wiped of all data, including your personal information. Hard drives we are going to keep first have their partition table removed, and then are overwritten 4 times using a program known as "badblocks." For more information about badblocks, please visit: http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/badblocks.8.html If we are unable to reuse a hard drive it will be dramatically smashed with a sledgehammer.
If you would like to wipe your own hard drive before donating it, we recommend a tool like Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN).
For more information about FREE GEEK's reuse and recycling practices, come take a tour! Tours are offered Tuesday - Saturday at noon and 6:00PM, no appointment necessary.