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Dell Offers Curbside Computer Recycling
schm00 writes "A Dell
press release today announced an expansion of thier recycling program. For $15 they will arrange to pick up used computer equipment from your home and transport it to an EPA approved recycler. You can order pickup starting on March 25th. It's nice to see an alternative to the darker side of computer recycling."
Neat. But what happens with the recycled stuff? Do they just dump it or do they sell it?
Recycling and hydrogen fuel enhancements to follow the Iraq news.
Seriously, this is a nice item. I see so many computers go into the dumpster at work, especially when changing offices.
--------
Free your mind.
shoot, just tell me where you live, and i would be happy to be the computer scavenger...... and i will even do it for free..
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
These old computers will became missile controllers and *I have to pay* them for that.
They will be glad to pick it up from your home for free with thankful eyes and faces.
Not trolling, but I don't really think this type of business service worth any mention in slashdot. FYI, I donate all now-useless-for-me computer parts to charity (I live in Hong Kong, though. so YMMV in the states or other nation.)
"I have this old broken Monitor that I am going to replace - how can I get rid of it"
"Well you can either dump it illegally or pay someone to get it recycled"
"Well, I don't want to break any laws or hurt the environment. Who do I contact? How much does it cost?"
"Ummm"
This is a good solution to a dilema that many face - how to recycle thier old computer stuff ethically. This makes it easy and relativly painless - it still seems rediculous to pay to recycle the stuff, but $15 is pretty good compared to going rates.
Fifteen dollars isn't much, and letting Dell haul it away is easier than trying to cram a monitor down your garbage disposal.
However, whether most people will actually be willing to recycle old computers for $15 when they could dispose of them nearly as easily for free, remains to be seen.
Old computers either still have enough juice to be usable, or are so old that they are gaining value for collectors (check prices of some Sinclair models). So charity or eBay seem to be better solutions than paying somebody to take stuff away.
All of my used computers are riddled with bullet holes. Will you still take them back?
Sincerely,
Chuck
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Since most computers people are throwing out now are at least 486 level machines, why don't we get them back in working order, put a minimum Linux install on it with a browser and mail client and give them to people who can't afford computers. Most monitors are also usually repairable with a few dollars in parts, with the schematics it's usually something that can be quickly fixed.
Is there an existing non-profit organization that could start a thing like this nationwide?
Also, you could write you time off on your taxes at the end of the year if that mattered to you.
Does this sound workable to anyone?
Three Questions 1. What are they getting by doing this? It can be expensive to remove equipment. (Anyone want an IBM 3174? It's going for 99 cents on Ebay.) A couple of commercials might be a better use of the money. 2. What are they doing with the hard drives and are they informing the donators of hardware of this potential worry? Data could be restored, even when fdisked. 3. Who are they going to outsource to pick this equipment up?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Now I can properly dispose my old Dell to make room for a new UltraSparcIII :-)
This reminds me of the time my brother and I got into an argument (kinda stupid actually) about the volume verses mass of a computer monitor.
This is a true story!
My grandma had this really old Packard Bell VGA monitor that was basically worthless (soon to be replaced) and my brother threw it in the trash can. I said to my brother, do you think a monitor would float or sink if thrown in a body of water!
We discussed the weight of the monitor and the vacuum tube properties. My belief (at first) was that the monitor would sink as it was very heavy. Well my brother brought up the fact that the CRT tube was a vacuum mass and that it would float!
Well, last year we decided to go fishing at the local reservoir, while we were packing up the fishing equipment I was surprised to see the monitor sitting in the garage (my 80 year old grandmother had gone through the garbage can AGAIN!). We decide to put the monitor to the test so we packed it along with us to the lake. We floated out in our canoe (placed our bets) and tossed it into the lake! To my surprise the damn thing floated! I was pissed but only because I lost the bet.
BTW, the monitor was recovered and properly disposed of.
I work for the Lab ran by Departament of Energy. We have lots of old but still usable computers (on PII 500 level). The only problem is that they cannot be taken offsite for security reasons, and nobody wants them on-site. The security is so tight that when harddrive in one of new Dell boxes had to be replaced, the old broken one couldn't be taken by the serviceman (which is the usual policy).
The problem is thas institutions like this have the biggest stores of old crap and nothing can be done with this.
At my school, I help out with all the computer stuff.
We get so much crap dumped on us as "donations." I get to deal with a lot of it.
If I'm lucky, it will power on and boot up. (If I'm unlucky, it will be missing the CPU or the motherboard will be cracked in half.) Then, usually, the OS is fucked up enough that it needs a reinstall, so I get to search for drivers for random Dell crap from 1996.
Usually I just scavenge mice, keyboards, any 168-pin memory, and CD-ROM drives if they are IDE.
My favorite donation is when some asshole gave in a monitor.
Upon being powered up, a huge 1" arc was visible inside the back. I am told that 1" through air means about 20,000 volts. If you looked at the screen, random points of energy seemed to be sparkling from deep inside. I figured it probably was about to give me face cancer, and something inside popped and started smoking, so I turned it off.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Dell will hand this off to some contractor...the contractor will get part of the $15.00, and Dell will squander the rest.
The illegal aliens that actually do the curbside retrieval will simply drive around the corner and chuck your old box into the dumpster behind the pet store.
What is being touted as gleam in Dell's shiny good-neighbor smile is just another scam to polish a public image, gather personal info that can be sold to some marketing wonk, and make you pay for the honor.
The odds of any equipment actually being properly recycled are as low as ever...that means next to nil.
The only way to know that your old equipment is being disposed of properly is to do it yourself.
There's got to be alternatives:
-Give them to people who can't afford a computer.
-Leave them running distributed computing programs in the basement (SETI@Home, etc)
-Give them to me, and I'll take out the hard drive and add it to my array. Monitors would also be great, always need more of those. I'll even pay for the shipping if you want to get rid of it bad enough to pay $15!
In San Diego we have a company that will haul ANY electronics that has PCB's and CRTs for $0.39 a lb. Dell is gonna make a lot of money on this one. To think they are being nice to the enviroment too :P
When I was a college freshman the CS department was trying to get rid of their punchcarding Harris H800A mainframe; it was using about 65% of the capacity of the hallway of the geosciences building and the talk was, anyone who could haul off the beast could have it.
I checked the Dell Terms and Conditions and couldn't find where it said the offer was limited to "personal" computers; maybe I missed it.
Recently, my work threw out a nice Compaq Presario 1610 laptop (P150, 1.6gig, cd-rom, built in speakers), simply because the screen wouldn't come on. I pulled it apart, replaced the backlight with one from Fry's Electronics, and will soon be getting a 64 MB SODIMM from Kingston. I later plan on upgrading the hard drive to something more reasonable (probably a 4.3 gig drive), and dropping Debian or something on it.
A couple of years ago I grabbed a PowerTower 166 they didn't want anymore - one of these days I will put YDL on it and play.
My work throws out a lot of stuff, I try to rescue as much of it as I can, and give it to those who can use it. I have a bunch of motherboards that could make great firewall bases, or robotics dev platforms for the right motivated people...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The Dutch taxing system holds that all computer components have to be sold with "recycling tax" included. And I was so looking forward to a Dell truck dropping by at my doorstep, too.
Jynx
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
They "transport it to an EPA approved recycler" like it says. Of course the real question is what to they do with it, which is covered here in a story aptly title Exporting Harm.
Quack, quack.
I'm glad I can get rid of my outdated P4 2.8 GHz now that I've upgraded to a P4 3.06 in an environmentally friendly manner.
Thanks Dell!
Anytime I have old hardware laying around the house that is not worth selling on ebay, I just post an offer to my local LUG mailing list, within 5 mins there are multiple offers to pick it up for free.
Its great to see Dell do this and then pass it onto charity. I just can't help wonder though if they make sure the hard disks are wiped before passing them out. There have been many cases of where private information has ended up in the public domain.
:)
Also on a side note I just looked at the advertising graphic at the top, one of the 5 text ones. Its advertising in order (left to right)
Dell, itdisposal.com, Dell, Dell and Dell
Well looks like they've got their targeting data right
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
So long as they're within the last 5 years or so. I figure I could handle about 500 of them?
When reading the headline, "darker side of computer recycling", I somehow thought the "darker side" was going to be Microsoft in some form or another .....
I really should stop reading slashdot so often.
Thank you for that link to crra. That is quite informative - exactly what I have been fearing.
Our fascination with the very latest in technology is producing piles of junk. This is the reason I have been so frustrated at the Big Corporations which drive the market when they cease supporting the older stuff in order to force us to buy the later stuff, which is often incompatible with the earlier hardware, thus forcing junkage.
Example: Win 95 runs on 486 and earlier Pentiums just fine. It was designed for them. But try to license a copy of Win95. You either violate copyright or pollute the landfills with yet another operable, but obsolete machine, often rendered obsolete by something as simple as lack of a method of licensing the software.
Or what am I going to do with my old Panasonic "Laser Partner" printer? Its about 50 pounds of high quality steel frame that still works just great - problem is the toner is getting really hard to find. This machine has run for about 10 years now - and its gonna see end of life for lack of a consumable? I can probably still keep that old KSR-33 (TeleType) going... although it doesn't do graphics worth a shit and is only good for uppercase. Yes, the new stuff is a heckuva lot better, but why does it have to be so expendable?
This is why I get so furious when I see things like that Lexmark lawsuit against the company making aftermarket replacement toner cartridges. Enabling a manufacturer to mandate single-source consumables means you have empowered that manufacturer to render the whole fleet of machines in the field obsolete by merely denying access to their consumables. This crap was signed into law by the U.S. Congresscritters - people who *should* know better.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
New slogan: Dewd, your getting my old Dell!!!
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Don't forget about FreeGeek in Portland, Oregon and the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. The take donated equipment, recycle some and install Linux on the less antiquated computers for interesting projects and donation to needy individuals.
FreeGeek has an interesting concept: anyone who volunteers for 8 hours can take one of the Linux boxes home and take classes on how to use it.
There's a small profit to be made on scrap and precious metals that can be stripped out of old computers, which is part of the reason these non-profit organizations can sustain themselves. They don't charge for computer donations, but monitors are such a pain and hazard to dispose of properly there's a fee involved.
If anyone wants to start up something similar in Seattle, email my username at my homepage domain.