About Us

We're the Computer Recycling Project at the University of York. We're part of the York University Students' Union and we are also a student service. For those students who need a computer for a temporary purpose or over a short time, for example while waiting for a computer to be repaired, we provide a computer loan service to the students of York University.

But we do much more than that!

As many people know, computer technology moves on at a terrific rate. This means that many computers are outdated and replaced every four years or so. The University alone has thousands of computers, and so every year hundreds of computers get chucked out. Although we're very pleased that the University is keeping up with technology, this situation is bad for three reasons:

  • From an ecological point of view, the hundreds of computers discarded every year would take up an awful lot of landfill space. Being metal, they don't biodegrade very well and so would just sit in the ground for hundreds of years to come.
  • From an economical point of view, a lot of the equipment thrown out still has considerable value in the right markets. For example, certain old computers are now collectable. Also, a lot of electronic equipment has valuable materials that can be extracted and sold for re-use in manufacturing new equipment.
  • Finally, from a charitable point of view, many of the computers that are discarded are still very useful. There are many situations, such as charities and non-profit organisations who have no equipment budgets, where these computers would be found very useful.

    • So that's where we come in. We're a group of people who put in a few hours every week to try and rectify these problems. Essentially, our primary aim is to prevent equipment from being sent to landfill sites. We do that by refurbishing computer equipment for either selling to the public or donating to charity. Where equipment is so old that no-one wants it, we try to take it to bits and keep anything useful (a lot of PCs are built from standard parts!) and and dispose of the remains in an ecological manner - for example by taking bits to scrap merchants.

    Despite reselling equipment at very low prices, we still accumulate a modest amount of money. This money is given to charity