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Can CDs Be Recycled?
An anonymous reader asks: "I was recently doing a closet-cleaning and came across literally hundreds of old software CDs that are no longer usable — both manufactured CDs and CD-Rs. Note that by 'not usable', I mean that many of them simply couldn't be read anymore, possibly due to the fact that they'd been stored rather ineptly (no, I wasn't responsible for how they were stored). It seems wrong to just throw them out, but are there other things that can be done with them that will allow their raw materials to be reused in some way?Is it possible to reclaim CDs for raw materials?"
and if you're drunk, try goin' at one with a metal file and making ninja stars.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But only if they're RW.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Only thing I've thought to do with the CDs is to use them as coffee coasters. There's only so many coasters a person can have. Since I don't drink much coffee they double up for beer too.
The ones with sensitive data (financial) or work I shred into a shredder. I at least am aware some I might not want to give away or trash so its too easily recovered.
Isn't the problem that the metal and polycarbon layers in the CD would be hard to separate to recycle? If CDs are "bad for the environment/recycling", is there a better alternative for backups like backup tapes (DDS, etc)?
Here in Europe, CDs are collected for recycling.
Yes, you can recycle your cds. There's a list of places that offer cd recycling on recyclenow - http://www.recyclenow.com/what_more_can_i_do/can_i t_be_recycled/compact_discs.html
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
It would be cool if thinkgeek or someone made cds that were 120mm wide, but they only used the 1st 80mm, like mini cds, and they had 20mm ninja star spikes or something. That may you could store your top secret ninja plans and kill pirates at the SAME TIME!
Use them as Coasters?
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
While this is not a way to recycle CD's, it is fun and will destroy the data on it permanently. Put one data side up in the microwave and run it for 2-4 seconds on high and watch the light show. (I wouldn't suggest doing this in a microwave you like, it *seems* to do no damage to the microwave but I can't be sure)
Supplies!
Maybe the CDs are unreadable now, but who knows in the future. Future archaeologists may one day discover the thick fossilized layer of AOL trial CDs that we have deposited and somehow be able extract the data, or even use them to fuel their flying cars.
Here in Denmark, they're not.
It annoys me so much that in a little flat country such as Denmark we can't figure out how to sort our waste, especially when the tiniest mountain villages in Austria do it. >_< Ok, rant over.
"Good news, everyone!"
Since our lawmakers are contemplating a law which makes it mandatory to take back your leaflets and flyers and whatever other RL-Spam you cram into the mailbox of unsuspecting and innocent victims, AOL might have some R&D guys on this.
If they just stop sending me free coasters, I wouldn't mind either. The amount they sent during those last 10 years is enough for the next few decades.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How it worked or whether it was a hoax is anyone's guess. Google doesn't seem to have anything relating to it, either.
Depending upon what CD it is, and who the manufacturer is, you may be able to reclaim the license or a replacement CD. For example, you can do this with PowerDVD if you lose the license or the CD is damaged. Even if the software is not worth anything to you, it may be to someone else. If any of the CDs are for software of some original/current value, it may be worth taking the time to look into this. You could sell them on eBay for an earner.
Shiny but useless CDs can be very useful for artists who need sparklies. Try sticking them up on your local Freecycle or Craigslist as a freebie, someone out there may be willing to take them off your hands.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I use them as coasters. Some say they make good bird-scarers for the garden, but I don't have a garden so I don't know if it's correct.
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
I use them as flying targets with my shotgun.
If you live in Silicon Valley, you can check http://www.recyclestuff.org/.
1. You can make mobiles for a baby - nice interesting colours one side, shiny reflections the other. Get half a dozen hanging up on a coathanger arrangement and you have one happy baby.
2. Cover your walls in them. Either side will do. Good for students but abit sad for anyone else. Great for the 1960's Sci-Fi retro look though.
3. Put them at the bottom of a fish pond. Nice reflections in the sun. Probably annoys the hell out the fish though.
(Somewhat more 'out there' ones)
4. Put them on your hub caps for extra bling.
5. Dazzle muggers
6. That trick with microwave ovens.
7. balance furniture on uneven floors.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
You cold use it as a hat in costume parties stays on without any glue. My collegue did that in one party and of course won the main prize with it :D
My wife just got into mosaicing. I wonder how cleanly her tools will cut them. She could do some neat stuff with them.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/03/interesting-use s-for-old-cd-dvd-discs.html
You could burn them, and let plants photosynthesize the carbon into wood. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to make water.
o n/1980-05-01/Ajax-The-Woodburning-Steam-Powered-Tr uck.aspx
You could even use the energy to propel you forward.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportati
Yeah, it's as niche as using cooking oil from restaurants, but it might work. And there is always the nice living to be made from saving those interesting things people forget they ever stored on those CDs from seeing the light of day.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Giant Mirrorball!
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
We generate a LOT of CD and tech waste where I work, so we looked into this. Turns out there is a company that recycles all that sort of junk called GreenDisk, so I get a technotrash can every 3 months or so. Basically you pay $40 for a box that they send you, you load it up with up to 70 pounds of tech-junk, and then you send it back via USPS. They pay shipping on the way back (but I think you really pay it up front when you give them the $40 :-P).
http://www.greendisk.com/
Remeber the little toy gun that shot the little plastic disks out? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_gun/ Make a gun that could shoot out CD-Roms.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
In Houston, I saw the Art Car Parade and someone shaped the CD's into the shape of fish scales. Gonna have to look for those photos.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
A throwing-star-shaped CD shouldn't be a problem in a high-speed drive if it is perfectly balanced.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the AOL Throne yet.
entirely with junk CDs. It was very sparklely.
Clear, Dark Skies
http://photocreations.ca/cd_lamp/
A few years back I had an "unwise microwave oven experiments" party. Large, powerful old microwave that was headed for the dumpster and a keg of beer, everybody brings something to microwave.
The laptop backlight and 10" fluorescent tube were... bright. Like, searchlight bright. And strangely enough some of the most interesting effects were done with food, like split grapes and an unopened bag of marshmallows. We never achieved a stable plasma (we made some that lasted a few seconds, though) mostly because of the diffculty in controlling air currents.
Anyway, we fried a lot of CDs, because they look tres cool in the microwave. My buddy Pete and I each got a slight whiff of the vapor produced by this (we were outside at the time) and it was a week or so before we stopped feeling the effects.
I've used old CDs and spindles to build an inexpensive array of cohesion based turbines.
I've been using it to power my world domination experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine
I've seen people using them to make clock faces -- just attach a cheap clock mechanism to the back, and a set of hands to the front, and voila. You don't even need to drill a hole in the middle.
Very cheap and tacky, but from the number of them I've seen for sale in flea markets, people must obviously buy them, so what have you got to lose? (apart from your dignity and whatever it costs to buy those cheap clock mechanisms)
The new in-thing for going to the disco.
Let's make a huge space mirror from all the old unused CDs on earth. Or maybe make that space elevator by stacking them. Or keep them as ammo to throw at alien flying saucers. You knew that you can only fight flying discs with other flying discs, right?
http://www.solardeathray.com/
You can use the CDs to focus the sun's energy to a point and make a solar death ray! It's fun- all you need is a little epoxy!
Yes.
Electronic waste is a huge part of our community in the United States and as a result a lot of recycling centers and other facilities have cropped up to try to handle it. Since I work for them, the first place I'd check to locate a facility near me is EARTH911, there is even a computer recycling section being floated right now: Computer Components Recycling.
In many cases they will be reuse and donation centers, or something like ACT; in the end anything that gives these items a longer lifespan in the community or puts them to different use than ending up in a landfill is a step in good direction.
Mill Avenue Vexations
You could always build a Chair with them . . .
http://stupidco.com/aol_throne_intro.html
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Surely searching for 'cd recycling' would have resulted in an answer to this question.
Salut,
Jacques
someone already said cd lamp, here's another version http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=2425725
I have seen and heard of several people using old/AOL CDs to scare birds away from various vegetable gardens and allotments. You hang CDs from a tree/fence/whatever (or along a string between to stakes) by a thread through the centre, and the constantly moving rainbow patterns as the CDs spin in the wind confuse and scare birds. They reportedly work much better than scarecrows (most types of bird soon work out that scarecrows can't really move and just get used to them).
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I've always wondered if one could use them as a roofing material (though fashioning a fastener for the rather large central hole would be a pain)
A quick search on Google leads one to this page though:
http://www.obviously.com/recycle/guides/hard.html
where it has some information and lists two addresses which will take them to recycle (and CD-Rs has ~20mg of gold --- who knew?)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It's a box for any electronic trash that has all the recycling and shipping fees included in its purchase price. Total price is $30 for a 35lbs capacity box, or $40 for a 70lbs capacity one. Or you can get bundles and give them away as gifts to everyone. You can throw anything from CDs to videotapes to laptops to cell phones in there. When it's full, you close it up and ship it (for "free").
stack them all together,drop a flourescent tube in the hole,got yourself a piece of art thats ready for its MoMA debut
If that wasn't the case, I'm pretty sure it's a hoax. Why? Because commercial CDs aren't like CD-R/RW; the latter have crystalline layers that respond to heating changes from the laser to form reflective/non-reflective areas, the former are actually *stamped* with 3D pits and lands.
Both reflect/deflect the reading laser beam in the same way (in most players), so the discs can be read in the same machines. However, there's no way you're going to *change* the contents of a stamped CD in anything like the same manner as you would with a CD-R. It's about as likely as a floppy disk drive's magnetic head being able to rewrite the grooves of a 7" vinyl single.
In fact, you'd actually have to (somehow) melt or reconfigure the plastic of the CD itself, and since it was never designed for this, I've no idea how you'd do it accurately. It would likely be a horrifically expensive (and pointless) lab curiosity at best, and no-one in their right mind would try to market it in the face of CD-R.
Hoax, hoax, hoaxy hoax....
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Details are in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Homemade-Lightning-Creative- Experiments-Electricity/dp/0071373233
Pass them around so everybody can install crappy software on their computer(s). After all, Microsoft WANTS you to pirate their crap.
Death is life's great reward. R. Hoek
The Asterisk open-source PBX is available on asterisk-shaped demo disks that you can pop into your PC to install a Linux OS and Asterisk PBX server software. It's not a perfect ninja star, but pretty good.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Something tells me that the value of the raw materials is much less then the cost to recycle. I bet the damage to the environment from TRANSPORTING the CDs to the recycling center is higher then the cost of chucking them in the trash.
No, I will not work for your startup
I've tried this, the moisture they get over is just spread onto your coffee table/desk Coasters need to be cork on top of a mesh plastic thing, I drink lots of ice water and I've even had some cork and wood coasters split over time
- the one near the Pointy-Hair'd VP's office.
Which will jam.
Then you can enjoy the inevitable company-wide memo.
Bonus:
New hires, even many years later, will be boggled by the 'No CDs or DVDs!' signs on all the shredders.
If the CD contains copyrighted music, video, game data, or text that someone might want in the future, keep it, even if it does not play. I'll tell you why later.
-John Fenley
Glue two disks together, shiny sides out. Then drill a hole through them at some point about one-quarter of an inch from the outer edge. Insert a Christmas ornament hanging hook into the drilled hole. Drill another hole about one-quarter of an inch from the inner rim. Using fishing line, attach a miniature Xmas ornament or any other reflective object to the original disks. Great for a geek Xmas tree, or perhaps an office cube wall, hanging from a short tinsel garland.
Otherwise, cycle the cd-r's through a shredder, and toss the others into a landfill!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
Of course. Like all plastic items they are made of petroleum and so burn quite well.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.