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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?"
Two winters ago I had finally hit a breaking point of cruft. 11 computers weighed my personal space down, sparc servers and stations, sgi indigo2s and dumb terminals, countless x86 machines in varying states of decay. Sounds like you? In a panic, I updated my slashdot sig announcing that my lan was for sale, more of a joke to myself, a poke at my own sloth. Amazed at an almost immediate response with a serious inquiry, I reconsidered my offer and realized, "why not"? What had that pile of crap done for me? It caused me anguish, it made me think every single night coming home from work, "one of these days, I'm going to clean this place up". And so I went ahead with it, and sold everything on my lan for 400 dollars. I got 1 new machine with it, and 10 months later, an ibook (with other money) I haven't looked back since. In that time I've started, and completed, many of the mundane backburner projects that were always on-hold for seemingly forever. My point to this post is, if you haven't used a thing, and are keeping it because you think you might, why not just get rid of the thing (and this, a chance to do it properly, and for free!) and not let it vex you, sitting idle in the corner, calling out to your procrastinations ... (admittedly, 2 of the 3 boxes i mailed were lost or destroyed. the third, the cables, was received a-ok. the buyer was upset until i told him i had insured them. somewhere, there's a little old lady with a bright purple indigo2 full of potting soil and philodendrons ...)
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I have two defunct laser printers, probably at least one dead monitor, and some other misc. stuff to come out of my basement. Stuff that frankly is too expensive to ship to sell on ebay.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Recycle your used tech with 5R Processors! They are the nation's largest computer recyclers and put a lot of the tech to work either through refurbished sales or donations.
Read jack phelps dot net
1) are they trying to get us into the store(s)? (hoping we'll do some business whilst we're there)
2) are they trying to do the public a service (by getting the possible toxic materials out of the dumps?
3) They're hoping (x)% of the materials turned in with have (y%) of redeeming worth, either directly, for sale on eBay, or as a donation to a local school as write-off donation?
It is impossible to get rid of monitors, at least here in Washington state. Even working monitors. Schools don't want them donated. Salvation Army and similar charities don't want them. You aren't allowed to throw them in the trash. All you can do is sell them, if you can find a buyer who actually wants one, or pay $10 for environmentally correct disposal. ($10 is for a 14" monitor; bigger ones cost more.)
So, this is a free service that is worth $10 or more if you need to get rid of a monitor. Cool.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I live around Boston, MA, and my roommate has been trying to get rid of an aging VGA monitor he bought on eBay for like 12 cents. After he found out it wouldn't fit on the shelf he wanted to use, he dumped it on the curb, only to learn the city wouldn't take it; they told him to take it to the dump. So of course, a week or so later, he goes to the dump, expecting to have to pay them to take it. The dump people tell him, "no, the city will take it for free; just leave it on the curb. We *can't* take it here." So this Monday, he leaves it on the curb, a little bit frustrated but happy to see it go.
What do I see while walking to my car this morning? His monitor, lying alone on the sidewalk, the only item left behind after the garbagemen visited.
So, thanks, Office Depot!
P.S. Go Earth.
While having (not one but) two corporations run this recycling program gives me some initial confidence, what makes me think that they'll dispose in a eco-friendly manner at all?
Many local governments where I live have zero regulations about proper disposal of large electronics, heavy metal laden motherboards, and leaded glass in crt's and tv's. If anything they have a maximum weight limit which is easily circumvented by some creative crushing and re-partitioning.
My local governement is very anal about their disposal regulations because of having to build a new landfill within the past few years. What's to stop the local Office Depot from taking all the hazardous/heavy/dangerous junk and shipping it one county over where the regulations are non-existent.
Office Depot is trying to cop some good materials in the same way they'll trade a pack of paper for a used ink cartridge. The resale of those cartridges (once discected and reconstructed with knockoff inks/carts) is very lucrative. What's the profit angle on the used computers? There's probably something quite profitable here (beyond just getting people into stores who may be in the market for a new computer).
Funny, I was always under the impression that they mined lead out of the ground in the first place! So what exactly would be the problem with putting it back where it was?
Same goes for mercury. Where does it come from? How about uranium? The ground? No way... I don't believe it. That horrible, harmful stuff couldn't possibly come from the ground...
Really, I fail to see the environmental impact of this stuff. The only argument I've ever heard is that it pollutes drinking water. Guess what... that's not the environment's problem. That's a HUMAN problem. The grass has no problem using the water and getting rid of the lead. Fish aren't wiped out by mercury in the water, it merely removes the weak. Uranium hardly causes widespread panic by causing green, glowing birds. Nature doesn't give an airborn rodent's posterior about these "pollutants". It's the chemical compounds that we manufacture that cause most of the problems, not the nearly-pure heavy elements.
So while an unbroken CRT is relatively safe to humans, even a broken CRT is relatively safe to the ever-so-beleaguered environment.
Seriously, corporations don't do jack unless they think it'll help them sell their wares.
Sweeping statements like that are generally wrong.
Corporations are not Borg entities. They are made up of individuals. Sometimes the individuals can successfully push the company into doing some Good Things, and guess what? Those individuals might not be the souless, calculating evil bastards you seem to think they are.
It's true that corporations often do good things that might in some way benefit them. That's called "doing well by doing good" and I don't have a problem with it. You shouldn't, either.
Corporations don't have hearts, and neither do boards or executive officers.
It's healthy to be a bit suspicious of companies; don't accept their press releases without a grain of salt. But you sound like someone who has gone overboard the other way. All corporations are not the same, and everyone who works for a corporation is not necessarily evil.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Funny, I was always under the impression that they mined lead out of the ground in the first place! So what exactly would be the problem with putting it back where it was?
Same goes for mercury. Where does it come from? How about uranium? The ground? No way... I don't believe it. That horrible, harmful stuff couldn't possibly come from the ground...
Ok, let me use an analogy that is strangely appropriate for you:
There is probably about 4 pounds of feces in your body. Take it out. Now eat it. Whoa, I bet you don't feel too good. Just because it comes out of your body doesn't mean you can just put it back in without doing some damage.
Additional Tip: If you actually try the above experiment, make sure to record it. Maybe you can sell it to a German video company to pay for your hospital bill.
Sounds like a great source of free data for office depot - now when you get email from them on your old email address you hardly use you might think twice before you hand out hard drives or fax machines with all numbers programmed in ;_)
FragHARD
FragHARD or don't frag at all
Somebody suggested this as a good way to destroy hard drives:
1) Hang old HD up broadside.
2) Hook up old 12v lawn tractor battery to get platters spinning
3) FIRE
4) Watch HD explode at 5400 or 7200 RPM.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I take old stuff from corporations and individuals and refurbish it and resell it cheap to the needy or young upstart SOHO's....
I take in more stuff than they do and I am,
1. disabled
2. working alone
Come on guys, you can do better than that.
My typical daily run (pick up)is 20 laserjets, 4-5 21" CRT's, +/- a dozen PC's, 6-10 injets, and 2-300 lbs of cables and wall-warts.
If I can do it this much by myself and disabled at that, they can do better. And I DO NOT throw ANY of it away, it ALL goes back to someone. A lot of it I simply refurbish and give away or trade away just to keep it from piling up.
shameless plug, http://www.SystemRecycler.com
.
You know, people will take these things even when you're honest with them.
My parents moved a few years ago from a 3000 sq.ft. house into an 800 sq. ft. condominium. Needless to say, not all their belongings would make the move with them.
My mother sold the best, yard-saled what she could, and then started making a habit of putting things out on the lawn every Tuesday afternoon with a big sign marked "FREE!". By evening, the lawn was empty, except for the sign -- and sometimes that was taken too.
After three months of her Tuesday give-aways, my mother had ridden herself of all the things she wasn't going to take with her. So, the Tuesday before the movers were scheduled to arrive, there came a knock on the door at 3:00 p.m. A shy, sheepish man with a wrinkled, stained shirt asked her if anything was available that day. My mother said no, wished him a good day, and closed the door.
She was surprized that he had the nerve to ask. She was ever more surprized when people came knocking all that afternoon and evening.