Disposal & recycling
Electronic Waste
Also known as: e-waste · WEEE · old electrical appliances · Elektroschrott
Electronic waste (“Elektroschrott”, also e-waste or WEEE) covers all end-of-life electrical and electronic devices. In Switzerland disposal is already paid for at purchase through the advance recycling fee, which is why any retailer must take devices back free of charge.
The legal take-back obligation
Switzerland has a statutory take-back obligation: every retailer must accept back devices in the categories it stocks — free of charge and regardless of where the device was bought. This is financed by the advance recycling fee (“vorgezogene Recyclinggebühr”, VRG) you already paid at purchase.
In practice that means nobody may charge you a disposal fee for an electrical appliance. Anyone billing a “landfill fee” for disposing of a fridge is charging for something already paid for. Only the effort for removal and handling is legitimate.
Data protection on storage media
Computers, smartphones, tablets, external hard drives, printers and multifunction devices contain memory holding personal or business data. Simply deleting files or performing a factory reset is not reliable — data can often be reconstructed.
What is safe is either physical destruction of the storage medium or certified erasure using a recognised procedure. For business closures this is mandatory; for private clearances it is strongly recommended. Ask for a certificate documenting it.
Cooling appliances are a special case
Fridges, freezers, air conditioners and heat pumps contain refrigerants that act as greenhouse gases and are in some cases ozone-depleting. They must not be damaged and have to go to facilities that extract the refrigerant properly. A carelessly discarded old fridge is a real environmental problem, not a formality.
A real-world example
Closing an office in Dübendorf produces 22 notebooks, three servers, two multifunction printers and assorted small devices. All storage media are removed, the hard drives certifiably erased and the SSDs physically shredded. The client receives a destruction certificate listing serial numbers. The devices themselves go for recycling; some of the notebooks are resold after erasure and credited against the bill.
Services that cover this
Frequently asked questions about Electronic Waste
Would you like a quote?
Free on-site assessment, a fixed price, and final cleaning with a handover guarantee (Abgabegarantie) — we stand behind the result at the official handover inspection.
Read the Google reviews: 4.8 out of 5 stars from 42 reviews4.8(42)