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?"

Comments

Here's a few

[clickclickdrone]

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.

Re:Dunno about Europe.

[Corporate Troll]

I bring them to the recycling centre like almost every other plastic I collect. Nobody ever complained. I'll look if they have a separate container for it next time I go there. There are employees that do the sorting for us. (I like going there, especially for dumpster diving in the electronics container. Nuggets I found there are a P-IV 1.9GHz and an AMD Athlon 1.2GHz... both in working order. I don't even bother taking P-III class machines anymore... *grin*)

I don't live in Denmark though...

Re:Yes

[Gr8Apes]

Ah good! A place to forward all those AOL CDs to.

AOL Throne

[iangoldby]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the AOL Throne yet.

DON'T BREATHE THE VAPORS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yes

[bradkittenbrink]

I so thought that was going to be a link to http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe &video=movie

Re:Dunno about Europe.

[ProppaT]

There really is no such thing as cd recycling. The metal in the foil is considered toxic, and there's no real way to reuse the plastic because of the foil inside, so they're more than likely just disintegrated...unless there's some way to reuse the dust if it's pulverized (which I really doubt).