Electronics Recycling

[BarTopDancer]

REcycle Small Electronics for Free by Mail:

This was announced in March, but the word has been slow to spread.

You can now recycle your small electronics and printer cartridges through the U.S. Postal Service's Mail Back program, for free. To discard your inkjet cartridges, PDAs, BlackBerries, digital cameras, iPods, and MP3 players in an environmentally responsible way, place them in the free, postage-paid envelopes available at 1,500 post offices across the country, then pop them in the mail.

This would benefit those who don't want to try and sell their old items, or have a stash of phones that are ancient.

[MouseWife]

Wow, this is, in fact, pretty cool. ;0)Thanks!

[innerSpaceman]

We kept meaning to drop our electro waste at UCLA, where they have a drop-off point early on Saturday mornings.


BUT ... they decided to prowl Westside neighborhoods last Monday and pick-up all the electronic waste!! How cool was that?!?




(Of course, something else broke beyond repair on ... believe it or not ... Tuesday.)

[Kevy Baby]

This is cool - thanks for posting it!

I mentioned this in another thread yesterday, but there are more and more in-store recycling options as well. I know Best Buy has had drop boxes in their stores for many years. I am seeing them in more places recently, even in my local Vons supermarket!

[BarTopDancer]

Yup. More and more things should be recycled and not tossed.

Electronics chargers, batteries, cables, toner.

I found FreeRecycling.com that pays for items, but I didn't do much research on it.

There's a bunch of those type of sites out there as well.

Goodwill and Salvation Army usually take broken printers, newer TVs, computers (be sure to remove your hard drive) and other electronics to use in their vocational rehabilitation training.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

(be sure to remove your hard drive)

Good point which brings up another question: what do you do with the hard drive? I don't want to go so far as to disassemble it to remove and then shred the platters. Any suggestions on this?


ETA: this reminds me of a lesson I learned that could have been VERY painful. Many years ago (mid-90's) , I took a notebook computer to a trusted repair place (I knew the guy personally). It was one of the first Mac notebooks (Powerbook 140). Since the motherboard was fried and it wasn't worth paying to replace it, I told them to wipe the HD and toss it.

A couple of months later, I received a call from the FBI (). Bottom line was that someone (it turned out to be the UPS delivery driver at the place that fixed my computer), pulled my notebook out of the trash, shipped it to his buddy in Washington who opened the box of a NEW notebook and placed my computer in the box which was then delivered to some governmental agency. They did full forensics on the hard drive (which had been wiped, but obviously not as cleanly as it should have been!) and were able to pull my name, etc. off the computer. Hence why they were calling me.

The agent hinted that they hadn't thought I was involved (which, obviously I wasn't), but I was still a little stressed by the situation. I later learned that this was a ring involving several UPS personnel and others that was eventually broken up.

So now, I am VERY careful about disposing of hard drives (as in, I don't )

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

Good point which brings up another question: what do you do with the hard drive? I don't want to go so far as to disassemble it to remove and then shred the platters. Any suggestions on this?

Magnets

sledgehammer

Or buy some software that will really super wipe the drive.

I prefer the sledgehammer method.

Or keep it, buy a case for it and use it as an external drive for your new machine.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

Magnets

sledgehammer

Or buy some software that will really super wipe the drive.

I prefer the sledgehammer method.

Or keep it, buy a case for it and use it as an external drive for your new machine.

Apple has built in to their OS an optional "secure empty trash" function which basically writes nonsense data over the files being deleted.

But I have some bare SCSI drives that I want to discard. Unfortunately, I don't have any working computers with SCSI drives or ports (I do have a SCSI external enclosure). I could probably get an adapter I guess.

[lizziebith]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

<snip>
Or keep it, buy a case for it and use it as an external drive for your new machine.

That's what I do...I have every hard drive I've ever owned...it's sometimes fun to poke through them and giggle at what I once thought was so shiny...

[BarTopDancer]

I have some disks that I want to go through. Need to get unlazy and buy a drive for them.