Just in time for school, AT&T gave away 115 free refurbished laptops to students and families at its Potomac Yard location in Alexandria on Thursday (Aug. 20).
With a waitlist of more than 7,000 people, the 115 recipients were pre-selected via lottery. The event was the last of 10 distributions across the country this summer.
AT&T partnered with California-based Human-I-T to turn recycled electronics equipment from AT&T’s Retail E-Waste Campaign into free laptops. One laptop is donated for every 10 pounds of old electronics dropped off at blue recycling bins at AT&T stores across the country.
Despite applying online, Alexandria’s Nikki P. said she thought the congratulatory text from AT&T telling her she’d won a laptop was a scam.
“I called the number, and the operator said, ‘No, this is not a scam,'” Nikki said. “We do have doctor’s appointments, Zoom meetings, overall web searching. This is really going to help, because it gets really tiring doing everything on your phone.”
AT&T will also give away 250 laptops at the store in October, staff said.
According to AT&T:
This laptop distribution demonstrates how customer participation in AT&T’s Retail E-Waste Campaign can create visible local impact. By recycling unwanted electronics and contributing trade-in value, customers are helping support laptop distributions for students and families while promoting more responsible electronics disposal.
This effort is also part of AT&T’s initiative to help address the digital divide through internet accessibility, affordability and safe adoption. AT&T is committing $5 billion to help 25 million people get and stay connected to high-speed internet by 2030. AT&T will distribute 30,000 laptops nationwide in 2026.
