Why would the recycler be a 'vendor'? Is the district sending them laptops and paying them?
I'd have thought competition would mean the winning bid would be offering to pay the district something (even if only $20 per device) rather than requiring payment.
https://info.mayeralloys.com/ewaste-blog/why-is-there-a-recy...
But in this particular case:
1. The laptops are being disposed of not because they have physical faults, but because their software is out of date. So there are no toxic materials to be disposed of.
2. These laptops were used by children, for school work. They don't contain state or commercial secrets, so the hard drives don't need to be shredded.
3. Even if there are secrets on the laptops, it's sufficient to do a single-pass erase before install ChromeOS Flex.
I'm really curious: if someone were to give you 1000 4-year-old Chromebooks, of which 200 had physical faults and the remainder had only software issues, how much you would spend (on labor for re-imaging and physical cleaning, and on processing waste materials) vs. how much you'd recover by selling the laptops on ebay.
1. Get approval by way of an exception in the process to sell any devices still functional while still processing non functional devices through an e-waste vendor.
2. Paying someone per hour to wipe the devices to ensure no school or children's data remains, and confirming this has been done (otherwise, reputational and data loss risk).
3. Paying someone per hour to facilitate selling these devices second hand.
Keep in mind labor shortages currently across the country, and why it is cheaper to write a check, ship these devices to a shredder at the e-waste recycler, and get a certificate of destruction back that no one is going to harass you about. Colorado minimum wage is $13.65. It is ~$400 to process one ton of e-waste.
What I don't understand is: why is the market-clearing price for this service positive, instead of negative?
I wonder how much net profit the recyclers make, per ton.