Australia's big retailers all run some form of e-waste or battery recycling, but they accept very different things. This guide compares what Officeworks, Bunnings, Harvey Norman, and The Good Guys take, what it costs, and, just as importantly, what none of them do, so you know when a retailer is the right drop-off and when you need a council point or a certified recycler instead.
Officeworks takes the widest range of tech e-waste for free through its Bring It Back program: computers, monitors, phones, cables, accessories, and printer cartridges. Bunnings takes batteries only, through B-cycle bins, not general electronics. Harvey Norman and The Good Guys run e-waste take-back and trade-in for the products they sell. All of these are free or low cost and handy for a household with a few small items. What none of them do is destroy the data on your devices, take business or commercial volumes, or reliably accept large items in bulk, which is why business e-waste needs a certified recycler instead.
Retailer programs are one of the most convenient ways to recycle small electronics, because you are often passing the store anyway. The catch is that each retailer's program is scoped to different items, and the details change, so it pays to know the shape of each before you make a trip. The comparison below sets them side by side, then this guide walks through each program and, at the end, the line where retailers stop and a proper recycler begins.
One quick note on why these programs exist at all. Retailers run them partly because customers increasingly expect it, and partly because of product-stewardship schemes that share the cost of recycling across the industry that sells the products. That is also why the details shift over time as schemes and partners change, so while this guide gives you the reliable shape of each program, the golden rule is always to confirm the current accepted items in-store or on the retailer's website before you make a special trip. A two-minute check saves carting a television across town only to be turned away at the counter.
Programs and accepted items change, so confirm in-store before a big trip. This is the general shape as of 2026.
| Retailer | What it accepts | Cost | Data destroyed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Officeworks (Bring It Back) | Computers, monitors, hard drives, laptops, phones, cables, accessories, printer cartridges | Free, in-store | No |
| Bunnings (B-cycle) | Household and power-tool batteries only. Not general electronics | Free, in-store | N/A |
| Harvey Norman | E-waste take-back for products it sells; check the specific store and items | Free / low cost | No |
| The Good Guys | E-waste recycling plus trade-in on eligible tech for a store credit | Free / trade-in credit | No |
| Australia Post | Used printer and toner cartridges | Free | N/A |
| Certified recycler (ITC) | Business e-waste of any type, in volume, with data destruction | Free for qualifying volumes | Yes, with certificate |
Officeworks runs the most comprehensive retailer program for tech, with free in-store recycling stations usually near the front of the store. Through Bring It Back it accepts computers, monitors, hard drives, laptops, phones, cables and chargers, keyboards and accessories, and printer and toner cartridges, and it works with recycling partners to process them. For a household or a small office clearing a handful of tech items, it is often the single easiest option.
Watch for: it does not erase your data, so wipe devices first, and it is not built for business quantities or large items like big televisions.
Bunnings is a common stop for battery recycling, hosting drop-off bins under the national B-cycle scheme for household and power-tool batteries. This is genuinely useful, because loose batteries are a fire risk in the household bin and should never go there. What Bunnings does not do is take general electronics: computers, televisions, and printers need to go elsewhere. If your search for "Bunnings e-waste" was really about a computer or TV, use Officeworks, a council point, or a certified recycler instead.
Harvey Norman runs e-waste take-back arrangements, generally oriented around the categories it sells, and can often take an old item when delivering a new one. Because arrangements and accepted items vary by store and product, the reliable move is to ask the specific store what they will accept before you go, particularly for larger items.
The Good Guys offers e-waste recycling alongside a trade-in program that can give you a store credit for eligible working tech rather than simply recycling it. That makes it worth a look if a device still has value, since a trade-in is a form of reuse that also puts money back in your pocket. As with the others, confirm current terms and eligible products in-store, and remember that trade-in devices still need to be wiped first.
Every retailer program is built for convenience and small quantities, and every one of them recycles the device without erasing your data. For a household that has done a factory reset, that is fine. It becomes a problem the moment the device held business or sensitive data, which the next section covers. For the full household picture across councils and schemes too, see how to recycle electronics in Australia.
Because no retailer program erases your data, the most important step happens before you leave the house. Any device that stored information, a computer, laptop, phone, or tablet, should be wiped first. Back up anything you want to keep, sign out of your accounts including email, cloud, and app stores, remove SIM and memory cards from phones and tablets, and run a full factory reset with encryption enabled. On a phone or laptop, also turn off any account lock, such as Activation Lock, so the device is not tied to you.
For a personal device that combination is a sensible baseline: it makes the data unrecoverable for practical purposes while leaving the device ready to recycle or be traded in. For anything that held business or genuinely sensitive information, a factory reset is not enough, and dropping it in a store bin is a real risk. Our guide on how to securely wipe data from an old laptop explains why a simple delete leaves data recoverable, and what proper destruction involves. The two minutes it takes to wipe a device is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy against your old accounts turning up in someone else's hands.
Batteries deserve a special mention, because they are the one item where using the right bin is a safety issue, not just an environmental one. Loose batteries, especially the lithium-ion cells in phones, laptops, power tools, and vapes, can short-circuit, overheat, and start fires when they are crushed or damaged in general waste or mixed recycling. Fires caused by batteries in the waste stream are a growing and serious problem for collection trucks and sorting facilities across Australia.
That is why batteries go to dedicated drop points under the national B-cycle scheme, found at Bunnings and many other retailers and councils, rather than in your household bin or a general e-waste bin. Before dropping off loose lithium batteries, it is good practice to tape over the terminals to prevent them shorting. If a device has a built-in battery you cannot easily remove, recycle the whole device through an appropriate e-waste channel rather than trying to prise the battery out. The simple rule: batteries never go in a kerbside bin, and never in with general e-waste; they get their own bin, every time.
Some retailer programs, notably The Good Guys and various phone and manufacturer schemes, offer trade-in as well as recycling. Faced with both, the choice is simple: if the device still works and is recent enough to have value, trade it in or sell it; if it is dead or too old, recycle it. Trade-in is a form of reuse, and reuse sits above recycling because it keeps the whole working device in service rather than breaking it down for materials. A working two or three-year-old phone or laptop is worth far more as a working device than as scrap, and a trade-in credit turns that value into something you can use.
The one rule that applies to trade-in and recycling alike is to wipe the device first. A traded-in device is refurbished and resold, so your data must be gone before it changes hands. And if a device has no trade-in value but still works, consider donating it rather than recycling it: our guide on where to donate computers and electronics covers the charities that will pass it to someone who needs it. Recycling is the right answer only once reuse, resale, and donation are genuinely off the table.
A quick decision guide. Match the item to the channel that actually takes it.
| Item | Best channel |
|---|---|
| Small computer, laptop, or accessories (household) | Officeworks Bring It Back, or a council drop-off. Wipe data first. |
| Working recent phone or laptop | Trade in (The Good Guys, manufacturer, carrier) or donate. Wipe first. |
| Batteries | B-cycle bins at Bunnings and other retailers. Never the household bin. |
| Printer or toner cartridges | Officeworks or Australia Post. |
| Large TV or monitor (household) | Council point or event under the national scheme, or retailer haul-away with a new purchase. |
| Business e-waste, any volume with data | Certified recycler with on-site collection, data destruction, and certificates. |
Retailers are not the only take-back option. Many manufacturers run their own recycling and trade-in schemes for the products they make, and for some items these are the most rewarding route. Brands such as Apple, Dell, and Samsung offer trade-in and responsible recycling programs, often with a credit toward a new purchase if the device still has value, and they are set up to handle their own products properly. If you are replacing a device with a newer model from the same brand, checking the maker's own program is worth a moment.
For phones specifically, the mobile industry runs MobileMuster, a free program that recycles phones, chargers, and accessories by drop-off or post, and mobile carriers frequently offer trade-in on recent handsets. So for a phone you have three good options depending on its condition: trade it in or sell it if it works and has value, donate it if it works but has little resale value, or recycle it through MobileMuster if it is beyond use. The common thread with every one of these, retailer, manufacturer, or carrier, is that they recycle or refurbish the hardware but leave your data to you. Wipe first, every time. Our guide on mobile device recycling covers the phone options in more depth.
It is easy to be a little dismissive of a battery bin at the hardware store or a recycling station at the front of an office-supplies shop, but these programs matter more than they look. The biggest barrier to recycling e-waste is not that people do not care; it is friction. If recycling an old phone or a dead battery means a special trip to an out-of-the-way facility, a lot of it simply ends up in a drawer or, worse, the bin. By putting drop points where people already shop, retailer programs remove that friction, and every device that goes into a proper bin instead of landfill is a small win for both the environment and, in the case of batteries, fire safety.
Australia generates around 20 kg of e-waste per person each year, about three times the global average (Source: DCCEEW), and the amount is climbing. Getting more of it into the right channels is a numbers game, and convenience is how you move the numbers. So use the retailer programs for what they are good at, the small stuff, the batteries, the cartridges, the trade-ins, and reserve the council scheme and certified recyclers for the bigger items and the business volumes. Between them, these channels mean there is almost never a good reason for an old device to end up in general waste.
Retailer drop-offs are excellent for what they are for. These are the three things they are not for, and they are exactly where businesses get caught out.
Dropping a business laptop in a store recycling bin recycles the hardware but leaves your data on it, and hands you no proof it was destroyed. Under the Privacy Act, that is a gap a business cannot afford, with penalties of $50 million or more for serious breaches (Source: OAIC). That is the line where a retailer program stops and a certified recycler begins.
A retailer bin cannot do what a business needs. A certified collection can, and for qualifying volumes it is also free. Figures from named sources.
For a business, the answer is a certified recycler that collects on-site, destroys the data to the NIST 800-88 standard with Blancco or physically shreds it, recovers value from working equipment through buyback, recycles the rest under an ISO 14001:2015 environmental management system, and issues a Certificate of Data Destruction and a Certificate of Recycling. ITC does exactly that across Sydney and NSW, free for qualifying volumes, so a business gets the convenience retailers offer households, plus the data security and documentation retailers cannot. See how free business pickup works or the full e-waste recycling service.
The questions people ask most about recycling e-waste at Australian retailers.
Bunnings takes batteries, not general electronics. It hosts battery recycling bins under the national B-cycle scheme for household and power-tool batteries. It does not accept computers, televisions, or printers. For those, use Officeworks Bring It Back, a council drop-off, or a certified recycler.
Yes. Officeworks runs the free Bring It Back program with in-store recycling stations that accept computers, monitors, hard drives, laptops, phones, cables, accessories, and printer cartridges. It does not erase your data, so wipe devices first, and it is designed for small quantities rather than business volumes.
Both run e-waste take-back arrangements, generally focused on the products they sell, and can often take an old item away when they deliver a new one. The Good Guys also offers a trade-in program that gives a store credit for eligible working tech. Accepted items and terms vary by store, so confirm in-store, especially for larger items.
No. Retailer recycling and trade-in programs recycle or refurbish the hardware but do not erase your data or give you proof it was destroyed. Always wipe a device before dropping it off: back up, sign out of accounts, remove SIM and memory cards, and run a full factory reset. For business devices, that is not enough; they need certified destruction with a certificate.
Not really. Retailer programs are built for household quantities and do not include data destruction, business collection, or compliance certificates. A business clearing an office or retiring a fleet needs a certified commercial recycler that collects on-site, destroys the data with a certificate, and handles the volume. ITC provides this across Sydney and NSW, free for qualifying volumes.
Large televisions are covered free for households under the national television and computer recycling scheme, through council drop-off points and events. Find one on Recycling Near You. Retailers may take an old TV away when delivering a new one, so it is worth asking at purchase. A business with several TVs should book a certified collection.
Retailer programs are great for a few household items. For business volumes, data destruction, and the certificates retailers cannot provide, ITC collects across Sydney and NSW, free for qualifying volumes.
