Many Colorado districts built up a supply of Chromebooks as COVID closed schools. Now, some devices are nearing their end.

Stacked in towers scattered across a pair of rooms right outside Denver’s West High School, at least 8,000 Chromebooks wait their turn to be powered back to life. Some are covered with stickers — pops of color in the shapes of sharks, octopi, dogs wearing sunglasses and SpongeBob SquarePants, stuck on by students who wanted to set their basic black computer apart.

The Chromebooks will find their way back to a Denver school once they have been cleaned and repaired. But elsewhere, many others will simply be taken out of circulation and scrapped — part of what a recent report calls “Chromebook churn,” a costly and environmentally harmful consequence of short-lived devices.

Denver Public Schools is one of many districts across Colorado and the country eyeing the…