Computer Recycling in Portola Valley
Responsible electronics recycling for Portola Valley households and businesses— with convenient drop-off at our Burlingame EcoCenter and business pickup available within our Bay Area service radius. Whether you’re clearing out a home office, retiring old equipment from a small practice, or simply keeping outdated electronics from the landfill, GreenCitizen provides a certified, fully accountable way to do it.
We are open from Monday to Friday, 10 AM to 6 PM. (Closed on Major Holidays)
74,559
Business Customers
Served
413,832
Individual Customers
Served
No appointment is needed for drop-off recycling. Just come to our Burlingame EcoCenter to recycle your computers and electronics.
Where to Find Us?
GreenCitizen, Inc.
1831 Old Bayshore Hwy Suite 2, Burlingame, CA 94010
- +16504938700 Extension 103
- info@greencitizen.com
Office Hours
Monday to Friday
10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
(Closed on Major Holidays)
Closed on Holidays: New Year, President’s Day, Memorial Holiday, Independence day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the day after Christmas.
Portola Valley’s Sustainability Legacy
Portola Valley is a small residential town of about 4,300 people in San Mateo County, set along the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains just west of Stanford University. Covering roughly nine square miles of wooded foothills, meadows, and creeks, the town has protected its natural landscape since before incorporation.
When Portola Valley incorporated in 1964, its founders did so to prevent large-scale hillside development. Environmental stewardship was built into the Town’s General Plan from the beginning, with goals around minimizing environmental disturbance, conserving water, saving energy, and supporting renewable resources.
By the 2000s, the town had turned those values into formal climate action. In September 2006, Portola Valley signed the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, becoming one of only nine cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties to do so at the time, and earning Sierra Club recognition. In October 2007, the Town Council supported Assembly Bill 32 and adopted California’s statewide greenhouse gas reduction targets as local commitments.
Residents also helped make Portola Valley a solar leader. In November 2006, the community launched a SolarCity residential solar bulk-buy with an initial goal of 44 homes and 175 kilowatts. It finished with 77 homes and 355 kilowatts — enough to power a small hospital — and nearly 3.5 million pounds of projected carbon offsets over 20 years. By the end of 2007, Portola Valley had the fifth-highest per capita rooftop solar PV density in America, and the project became a model for SolarCity’s broader business. In 2008, the Northern California Solar Energy Association honored the town with its City Solar Award.
That same year, Portola Valley completed San Mateo County’s first creek daylighting project, restoring 300 feet of Sausal Creek that had been buried under the Town Center site for decades. The restored channel brought back native habitat, was planted through six community planting days with Acterra, and now sits at the heart of the town campus.
Portola Valley also maintains a dedicated Sustainability section of the town government with resources on green building, renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste reduction and recycling, water conservation, and air quality. The town is a partner in Peninsula Clean Energy, and residents are automatically enrolled in PCE’s clean electricity supply. New residential construction in Portola Valley is subject to green building requirements, and the town adopted a Sustainability Element as a formal amendment to its General Plan in January 2009 — making sustainability goals part of the town’s foundational planning document.
Computer Recycling for Portola Valley Residents and Organizations
Our Burlingame EcoCenter is approximately 20 miles from Portola Valley — a manageable drive via Alpine Road or Page Mill Road to US-101 North, then north to our Burlingame location. For residents who want a certified, item-level traceable recycler rather than an occasional drop-off event, GreenCitizen is a consistent, year-round option.
GreenCitizen has served the Bay Area since April 22, 2005, founded on Earth Day by James Kao with a mission to make every day Earth Day. We have served more than 413,000 individual customers, more than 74,000 Bay Area businesses, and recycled over 33 million pounds of electronics. Our historical service locations on the Peninsula included sites in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos — a few miles from Portola Valley — before consolidating at the Burlingame EcoCenter.
Our proprietary GreenCitizen Total Accountability Management System (GTAMS) tracks major items by unique asset ID from pickup or drop-off through the end of their recycling journey. We work exclusively with US-based recycling partners certified to R2 or e-Stewards standards, ensuring that electronics collected in Portola Valley are processed responsibly in the United States and not exported to overseas markets with weaker environmental protections. For devices containing sensitive data, we offer destruction options aligned with DoD 5220.22-M and NIST SP 800-88 standards.
For a community that has spent two decades measuring, reporting, and improving its environmental impact, that kind of accountability in an electronics recycler is not a bonus — it’s an expectation.
Acceptable & Non-Acceptable Items for Electronics Recycling
Accepted
Laptops
Desktops
Servers
Monitors/ TVs
Networking Equipment
Tablets/ Smartphones
Computer Components (Hard Drives, Circuit Boards, Keyboards, etc.)
Office Electronics (Printers, Fax Machines, Paper Shredders, etc.)
Kitchen Appliances (Toasters, Blenders, Microwaves, etc.)
Stereo Equipment (DVD Players, VCRs, Receivers, etc.)
Styrofoam (#6 Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) ONLY)
Console Video Games (Xbox, PS3, Wii, etc.)
CD/DVDs
Cables/Cords
Toner/ Ink Cartridges
UPS Batteries (SLA Only)
Not Accepted
Bottles/ Cans
Furniture
Polyurethane
Large Appliances (Stoves, Washers, Dryers)
Non-Rechargeable Batteries (Alkaline, Carbon Zinc, Disposable Batteries)
Light Bulbs (Incandescent and Fluorescent Bulbs)
Items containing liquid mercury (Thermometers and Thermostats)
Smoke Detectors
Styrofoam #4 Low-Density Polyethylene foam (LDPE/PELD)
Hazardous Waste (Paint, Motor Oil, Sharps, Bio Hazardous Waste)
Medical Electronics (Bodily contact devices such as Glucose Sensors)
Business Electronics Pickup for Portola Valley Organizations
Portola Valley has no industrial land use and almost no commercial core — but it is home to small professional practices, home offices, private schools, Stanford-affiliated researchers and faculty, family offices, estate managers, and other organizations that generate retired electronics on a regular basis. Our business pickup service is available to qualifying Portola Valley organizations within our Bay Area service radius.
Free Pickup for Qualifying Loads
Pickup fees are waived when the load includes at least 5 qualifying items combined. Qualifying items include laptops, desktops, servers, enterprise networking equipment such as switches and routers, phones or tablets 4 inches or larger, and LCD or LED monitors.
Pickup Suited to How Portola Valley Organizations Operate
There are no loading docks in Portola Valley. Our service is designed around accessible, low-friction pickup from standard residential and small-office settings:
- Home office IT equipment retirement
- Small professional or academic practice upgrades
- Private school or educational facility equipment refreshes
- Estate or property cleanouts involving electronics
- Stanford-affiliated household and faculty office equipment turnover
- Recurring recycling for small business operations
Items should be staged at an accessible ground-level location before our team arrives. Pickup requests are submitted online, and our team coordinates vehicle requirements based on what you’re recycling.
Data Security and Documentation
For any organization handling confidential information, GreenCitizen provides software-based data sanitization and physical hard drive destruction options.
Our data handling methods follow the standards referenced in DoD 5220.22-M and NIST SP 800-88 guidance. Certificates of Destruction are available for devices processed through GTAMS, providing a documented chain of custody that supports internal record-keeping and compliance requirements.
Verifiable Downstream Processing
All collected items go to US-based recycling partners certified to R2 or e-Stewards standards. For Portola Valley organizations that value verifiability in their sustainability practices, this represents a meaningful distinction from less traceable disposal options.
Everything went great yesterday. Your guys were super professional and took care of everything for us. I’m sure that we will have more for you in the near future.
I have nothing but praise for their whole operation. From the easy to use website to even great, friendly pickup staff.
Your crew provides such a high level of service. It all went very smoothly!
Electronics Drop-Off for Portola Valley Residents
Portola Valley households are where the recycling need is most consistent — old laptops from home offices, replaced monitors and televisions, retired tablets and phones, audio equipment from the 1990s, towers that haven’t been turned on in years. All of these are accepted at our Burlingame EcoCenter, with no appointment needed.
A drop-off form is required when recycling a television or computer. You can complete it on our website before arriving or at the center during drop-off.
Getting to Our Burlingame EcoCenter from Portola Valley
From Portola Valley, take Alpine Road east to I-280 North, then continue north toward San Mateo. Take CA-92 East toward US-101, merge onto US-101 North, and exit toward Millbrae Avenue / Millbrae. Continue toward Old Bayshore Highway, turn onto Old Bayshore Highway, then turn at Cowan Road and enter the first driveway on the left. We are located behind the 1831 Old Bayshore Highway building, across from New England Lobster Market & Eatery.
Pro Tip: Enter “GreenCitizen, Inc.” into Google Maps or your GPS for direct routing.
No Appointment Needed — Fast, Drive-Thru Intake
- Pull into the designated loading zone
- Our team comes out to help unload and sort your items
- Any applicable fees are confirmed before processing begins
- Most drop-offs are completed in under 10 minutes
Many Items Are Free to Recycle
The electronics most commonly accumulated in Portola Valley households — computers, laptops, monitors, tablets, servers — are free to recycle at GreenCitizen. Other items carry a per-pound fee that covers processing costs for materials that are more complex to handle.
For drop-off recycling, these are the items that are FREE to recycle and can be dropped off at the GreenCitizen Recycling Center/Eco Center in Burlingame.
Note: All Macbook EFi, Device Enrollment Program, and Remote Management Locks Must Be Removed
- Desktop computers
- Laptops
- Servers
- Tablets
- Monitors
- Network switches
- TVs
And here are the items that cost $1.00/pound to recycle.
- Cables/cords
- CD players and Walkmans
- Christmas lights
- DLP Projector TVs
- Fax machines
- Remote controls
- Heaters
- Ink/Toner
- Keyboards
- Microwaves
- Printers
- Miscellaneous electronics
- Scanners
- Stereo equipment
- VCRs
- DVD players
- Speakers
- Vacuum cleaners
- Fans
- Toasters
- Blenders
- Coffee makers
And here are the items that cost $6.00/pound to recycle.
- CDs
- Cassette tape
- Vinyl recycling
- DVDs
- Floppy disks
- VHS
- 35mm slides
- DLT/LTO
- Film negatives
It’s great to have such a well-run organization in our community to help us with all of our old electronics, especially laptops, which have sensitive information.
They were awesome. I was helping clean my mother in laws garage out. There was one tv that was literally falling apart. No problem here. We dropped off a couple tvs, a monitor, coffee machine, an old speaker, all for around 11 dollars. We rounded up to $15 to help them continue their excellent recycling service. They were friendly helpful and have a drive through. We are customers now! Good location as well.
The staff at Green Citizen were incredibly informative, helpful and courteous.The process of dropping off computers and hard drives for destruction was so quick and simple. They have an efficient set up. I highly recommend them and I will definitely be going back to them when I have additional items to recycle. It’s an impressive organization.
Frequently Asked Questions About Computer Recycling in Portola Valley
Yes. GreenCitizen serves Portola Valley residents through our Burlingame EcoCenter drop-off location, and qualifying Portola Valley businesses and organizations can request business pickup service within our 35-mile Bay Area service radius.
Yes. Portola Valley residents can bring accepted electronics to our Burlingame EcoCenter, Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 6 PM. No appointment is needed.
No. GreenCitizen does not offer residential electronics pickup. Portola Valley households use our Burlingame EcoCenter for drop-off recycling.
Our Burlingame EcoCenter is approximately 17 miles from Portola Valley — roughly a 20- to 25-minute drive via Alpine Road east to US-101 North.
Yes. Qualifying organizations in Portola Valley — including home-based businesses, small professional practices, private schools, Stanford-affiliated offices or faculty households with qualifying business equipment, and estate or property managers — can request pickup provided the load meets requirements and the location is within our service radius. Pickup fees are waived when the inventory includes at least 5 qualifying items combined.
Qualifying items include laptops, desktops, servers, enterprise networking equipment such as switches and routers, phones or tablets 4 inches or larger, and LCD or LED monitors. At least 5 qualifying items combined are required to waive the standard pickup fee.
Yes. GreenCitizen offers software-based data sanitization ($5 per drive) and physical hard drive destruction ($20 per drive). Certificates of Destruction are available for an additional $5 per unit. Our data handling follows the methods referenced in DoD 5220.22-M and NIST SP 800-88 guidance.
Yes. Portola Valley's General Plan Sustainability Element and its commitments under the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement and AB 32 all include waste reduction and responsible materials management as community goals. Recycling electronics through a certified, accountable recycler — rather than discarding or stockpiling old devices — directly aligns with those commitments. GreenCitizen tracks every major item through GTAMS, processes all equipment through US-based R2 and e-Stewards certified facilities, and provides documentation for businesses that need chain-of-custody records.
Yes. GreenCitizen works with recycling partners certified to R2 (Responsible Recycling) and e-Stewards standards. These certifications require rigorous environmental, health, safety, and data security practices and confirm that electronics are processed domestically rather than exported overseas.
No. GreenCitizen is an independent, for-profit electronics recycling company. We are not affiliated with the Town of Portola Valley or any municipal or county recycling program. We serve Portola Valley residents and qualifying businesses as part of our broader Bay Area service area.