Recycling and Refining: The Profitable Way to Dispose of Used Laboratory Equipment

If you have testing equipment that you no longer need, what should you do to recoup the value that still resides in it?

This question comes up often at testing labs, medical testing facilities, hospitals and other settings where equipment can become obsolete, inefficient, or too costly to run when newer testing technologies become available. At that time, most companies don’t simply toss their old lab equipment. They recoup some of its value in one of these ways:

• They sell their used equipment or trade it in when buying newer equipment. That’s efficient. It also makes good environmental sense if equipment contains chemicals or metals that could cause environmental harm if disposed of improperly.
• They donate used equipment to hospitals or medical testing centers where it can be kept in use – sometimes in third-world countries. This strategy can provide the donating company with tax advantages. If it’s a strategy you could consider, speak with your company’s accountants and/or tax-preparers.
• They dismantle the equipment they no longer need, remove components that contain precious metals like platinum and silver or other valuable components, and either recycle or sell them.

The Smartest Strategy: Picking the Best Precious Metals Recycling Company

If you’re not sure where precious metals like gold might be found in your used testing equipment, call Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners at 800-426-2344 to discuss what you have on hand. For more than 30 years, we have been paying testing companies large sums of money for recyclable precious metals that were hidden in their testing equipment – in components like thermocouple wire, electrodes, tubing, computer consoles, and even smaller items like platinum alloy bearing laboratory tongs and mesh screens. One call to us could be all that’s needed to keep precious metals – and dollars – from slipping through your fingers.