Prolonging Your Laptop’s Lifespan and Ensuring Eco-Friendly Recycling

Dec 4, 2023

Making key parts of laptops easy to disassemble and replace makes it easy to prolong the lifespan of a device, and it also makes recycling easier. This is why ASUS takes modularity into consideration throughout a laptop’s design process. This article explains how ASUS helps prolong your laptop’s usage through implementation of modularity and it also highlights measures ASUS takes to ensure eco-friendly recycling.

Modular design involves designing a product so that key components can be easily replaced. Designing key components that can be taken apart individually from the model enables replacement of that certain key part instead of replacing the whole product. Modular design can also change how components of a model latch onto each other, reducing materials needed to hold parts together – like screws, for instance. ASUS BR1100F has captive screws on its underside so the screws remain attached to the model during repair. This design eliminates the worry of losing a screw in the process. Our ASUS BR1100F and ASUS Chromebook CR11 Flip (CR1102F) all have modular designs since 2022.

Keeping tiny key parts in place is just the tip of all the benefits modular design provides. Everyday household tools like a screwdriver and plastic spudgers can be used to easily take apart models. Instead of taking time out of your day to visit a repair center and deal with the inconvenience of not having your laptop with you during the repair period, schoolteachers or IT managers dealing with repair of laptops with modular design are able to easily take apart their devices and switch out parts that need to be replaced.

Solutions with modular design are also cost-effective for institutions. Device life can be extended, maintenance costs are kept down, and even those without technical training can remove and replace key parts like the battery, motherboard, speakers, and more.

Not having to replace the whole model and only targeting a certain part for replacement creates a circular economy, reducing recycling processing costs and increasing recycling value of e-waste. Modular design allows the product’s lifespan to be prolonged, repair is made easy, waste and pollution is reduced, and key parts are utilized to their highest value before being disposed of. Thanks to factors such as these, ASUS We've achieved 7.3 points on repair index out of 10 by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition (MTES).

Ultimately, devices come to the end of their lifespan and need to be properly recycled. Considering presence of chemicals such as lead and mercury which are widely used in all sorts of electronics, it’s important that waste is handled correctly, to prevent leakage into landfills or the environment, which can harm wildlife and humans. Devices to be recycled also often contain plastics that can be picked out, processed, and reused to conserve energy and resources.

Global Take Back Service

ASUS has Global Take Back service in 30 countries worldwide, including greater China, Europe, the Americas, India, and Oceania. We have services in locations that cover over 75% of our sales market. Recycling devices involves four possible scenarios: drop off, in which you drop off your device at our service centers like customer service centers or designated recycling spots; mail back, where you mail the device to our service center; pick-up, involving contacting service centers and scheduling for the device to be picked up at a designated location; and finally, and trade in, where you trade an old device for a new one at a discount. ASUS takes back all sorts of electronic waste, including laptops and larger electronic appliances and even devices made by other brands.

When it comes to recycling electronic waste, we have strict regulations in place for our recycling partners to ensure appropriate disposal. Partners either follow regulations established by The Basel Convention, which is a United Nations treaty made for targeting processing of hazardous waste between nations, or they will comply to local electronic waste recycling standards. To have precise management over recycling procedures of our recycling suppliers, we have also put in place a three-stage management mechanism which involves ISO 14001 recycler, E-stewards, Responsible Recycling (R2), and WEELABEX verifications, continuous on-site auditing and monitoring, and performance evaluation in which failing recycling partners of our audit are replaced.

Progressing Towards Better Recycling

You would be surprised at how little e-waste is recycled out of the total amount generated. In 2019, 53.6 million tons of e-waste was generated worldwide with only 17.4% of it recycled, according to The Global E-Waste Monitor 2020. This is why putting the right mechanisms in place to tackle the problem is important to us. We’re proud to have been able to recycle more than 10,790 tons of e-waste in 2022, which is 11.2% of the total weight of all ASUS products sold worldwide that year. We will continue this progress and refine our recycling culture and mechanisms moving forward.

Through implementation of modular design, we have made 90% of the materials and parts used in our products easy to recycle and reuse. We not only aspire to be more responsible to nature through our recycling efforts, but we also try to give back to our society in the process. In 2022, ASUS donated over 2,016 refurbished computers to remote regions and disadvantaged populations. The refurbished computers were all originally brought into our service centers to be discarded, but they were redistributed to people in need after being repaired.

We are also advocates and believers of maintaining sustainability through innovative recycling ideas. ASUS held recycling competitions in Netherlands in 2017 and 2020 in which students brainstormed recycling ideas and were made aware of the importance of sustainability efforts. We also managed to recycle 1.3 metric tons of e-waste over a period of only 3 days on a 3C device recycling event in Spain in 2018.

Instilling the core values of circular economy into our laptop design process and consideration of its lifespan is a huge deal for us and is critical to meeting our ESG promises. If you would like to learn more about how to choose an eco-friendly laptop, visit our article on this topic.