Apple Recycling Old Macs for Free

charleste writes "CNN is reporting that Apple is going to recycle Macs for free. I wonder if this means they will actually recycle them in Cupertino, or sent overseas to be dumped as many 'recycled' computers do, or if they will actually mine them. And does this make the MacQuarium obsolete?"

Comments

Old Computers are a Gold Mine

[coffeecan]

Literally. There is more gold per-ton in old computer parts than gold ore, and its cheaper to extract. so it makes sense given the recent rise of precious metals for apple to salvage as much of these resources as possible. This Free program is probably going to turn a profit.

Re:Old Computers are a Gold Mine

[shashi]

Very true. There are also a lot of metals besides gold that are worth more (though in smaller amounts, like platinum). I've been part of a business before where we chunked up old Macs and PCs, packed all the circuit boards up in huge wooden crates, and sent them off to a recovery mill... a couple months later, a few tons of scrap is turned into a check for $20,000. It's not bad money but it takes a lot of manual labor to separate it out (i.e. separating circuits from CRT's and plastic) or the mill will charge you to do the separation and sorting.

Also, newer computers have much lower amounts of these materials, making them almost worthless. The sweet spot are the 68020's and 486's (the heavy processors are where you get the most precious metals per oz.).