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."

Comments

Recycling

[Night War]

Neat. But what happens with the recycled stuff? Do they just dump it or do they sell it?

There's nothing like

[Gortbusters.org]

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.

huh....

[xao gypsie]

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

For $15, why don't you donate this to charity?

[ketamine-bp]

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.)

Re:For $15, why don't you donate this to charity?

[stefanlasiewski]

I've recycled dozens of computers for charities, and recently helped a group install Linux on 300 refurbished (Pentium 75+) computers to be sent to Equador.

You wouldn't believe some of the crap I've had to wade through. Broken monitors, burned motherboards, piles of 8086's.

Most groups would rather live without a computer then take your old 386 with a green screen monitor. They need a computer that can run modern or semi-modern software, without a techie to help them deal with unfamiliar or primitive UI's.

For disposal, $15 is a pretty good deal.

Very good

[geddes]

I was talking to a friend of mine just yesterday:

"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.

Old stuff value

[pdan]

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.

Dear Dell

[Charlton Heston]

All of my used computers are riddled with bullet holes. Will you still take them back?

Sincerely,

Chuck

I've got an idea.......

[MegaHamsterX]

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?

Re:I've got an idea.......

[toddestan]

Well do you want to do it? How long do you think it would take to set it up and configure? What happens once you give it to someone, then something craps out? Do you really want to be stuck supporting all these various old computers, each one different than the others?

Personally, I would not want to spend my day trying to get Linux running on a bunch of 486/Pentium class systems. Supporting the old hardware, obscure drivers for sound, video, and CD. All the flakey hardware too, enough to make me pull my hair out.

Also, I find that many of the faster computers that get thrown out not because they are too slow it's because they are simply cheap peices of shit. Hell, recently I recycled a 333Mhz machine (eMachine), a 200Mhz machine (Packard Bell), 380Mhz (no-name pile of crap). These computers were plenty fast, but they simply crashed if you looked at them the wrong way. I kept and still use two HPs, a 75Mhz and a 100Mhz which are both rock solid.

Probably what you would end up doing is taking the best computers in the lot, and trashing the rest because it's too old/too flakey/not supported/not worth the time/simply busted/etc. And you are back to your old problem, what to do with the 9/10 or whatever computers that you don't want?

Security

[pdan]

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.

Don't.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

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

C'mon

[djupedal]

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.

Throwing out computers??

[fafalone]

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!

I do my part at my work...

[cr0sh]

In a way, I suppose...

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...

Re:recycling? how?

[msimm]

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.

post it to a LUG

[asv108]

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.

I'll pick them up for free!

[Eneff]

So long as they're within the last 5 years or so. I figure I could handle about 500 of them?