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Office Depot Wants to Recycle Your Old Computer
IcerLeaf writes "CNN reports that Office Depot will happily recycle one old electronics item per customer, per day, from July 18th through September 6th. Qualifying electronics include computers, monitors, printers, scanners, fax machines, digital cameras, cell phones, and TVs 27" or smaller. Office Depot and Hewlett Packard will be splitting the bill. What's coming out of your basement?"
Please don't. Ask yourself whether you'd want to use this machine everyday.
I volunteer for a medium-sized nonprofit. We get a fair number of PIII's that we use and a lot of 486's and PI's that we can't. Sure, we get a lot fewer PIII's and even PIV's, but there's enough out there on the market that our staff of sixty all have PIII's and above. People think they can just dump off their toxic crap and get a tax write off. Instead, they just shift the burden of getting rid of this stuff on us.
Also, the article specifically mentions Dell's recycling efforts:
"Computer makers such as Round Rock-based Dell Inc. have stepped up programs to take back old PCs"
No mention of HP, though, so maybe HP is just doing a better job of publicizing their program, despite being about half a year later than Dell.
A warning for those who will be getting rid of old computers: make sure the hard drive is wiped clean (and I don't mean with format). I would recommend using software similar to Autoclave. Every once in a while we get stories posted here about people picking up HDs from eBay and finding all sorts of goodies still on them... Don't be one of those people.
Unless you are absolutely sure that you have completely sanitized it. We have all seen reports here and elsewhere of banks/companies who have sold formatted hard drives where confidential data was still recovered.
A word to the wise, DO NOT use any old saw dust/chips as mulch. In fact almost all will cause damage to trees and buildings. "Why" ,you ask? "Wood chips are wood chips, right?" Wrong! The vast majority of wood chips attract termites, among other things. Mulching the flower beds around your home with maple or pine chips is like lathering your ass in honey and jumping into the grizzly bear pit at your local zoo. Not a good thing to do. Using the wrong wood chips around trees will also lead to termite infestation in your living tree. Sawdust can cause nitrogen depletion in the soil as well as fungal contamination in some plant. That's not a good thing either. You want to use very specific types of wood chips. You should use Cedar, Cypress, Eucalyptus wood chips as these will deter most bugs. Also note that bark chunks are not the same as wood chips. They have different bug deterring properties, not to mention visual appearance and most importantly price. A quick Google search will give you lots of information including this Lowes page. I was a landscaper in a former life.