While some people were buying up the colorful array of laptops that flooded the market in 2008, I yawned. A pink laptop. How nice, if you're into pink. I thought the blue ones looked pretty smart, since I'm a fan of that color, but it still wouldn't make me go out of my way to buy a laptop of a different color. Plastic is plastic no matter what the shade. I'm not a big fan of plastic. The stuff just doesn't biodegrade--ever. I don't know why we don't find some way to strengthen it, while making it less brittle and build our houses out of it, roofs and all. Seems like that would make house repairs a thing of the past. But no, the things we want to last forever are made of materials that biodegrade eventually--usually way sooner than we like. If we made our houses out of Legos(tm), then when the next big storm came along and blew an ancient tree onto our roof, causing part of it to collapse, we could just snap off and replace the broken pieces with new Legos(tm). But alas, this is not what we do. We make things that we are not likely to use for more than ten years max out of plastic that will then NEVER EVER biodegrade. So the monitors, CPUs, keyboards, mice(?), and laptops continue to stack up at the dump and sanitation workers have to worry about keeping the toxic innards of these gizmos and widgets out of the landfills. It is ILLEGAL, by the way, to dump computers, printers, monitors, etc. into your regular trash. They have lead and other toxic stuff in them.
Fortunately more companies are starting to provide recycling services for outdated and broken computers and their peripherals. If your old computer equipment still works, some community organization or business may be able to help you find a nonprofit or school who could use it. It may take a little effort on your part, but it's a great way to give back to the community and it costs nothing except a little of your time. If your equipment is broken, then you can take it to places like Office Depot or Staples to recycle it for a really small fee: $5-15 per "Tech Recycling Box" at Office Depot or $10 per item at Staples. Either way it's a great way to get rid of your broken computer stuff. Most places that sell ink cartridges take your old empties for free.
Hint: If you have a bunch of little stuff to recycle, go to Office Depot and get a "Tech Recycling Box," but if you just have a couple of big items, it works to go to Staples and pay the per item fee, which is $10. Dell computer recycling at Staples is free.
http://www.officedepot.com/promo.do?file=/promo/pages/0928_recycling.jsp
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/ecoeasy/index.html?storeId=10001&cm_ven=Glamour&cm_ite=ecoeasy
Best Buy offers free recycling of small items, such as cell phones and their batteries. A lot of other places offer various kinds of technology recycling, some at certain times of the year. See the link below for more ways to recycle the stuff that is illegal to toss in the trash.
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm#mftr
That lets us know how to deal with the old stuff. What about new stuff that is coming on the market? Check out the next posting at this blog to read a reprint of an article I posted at another one of my blogs. It's easier just to reprint it than to say it over again. Let's just say, I'm recycling that blog.
Editor of AGNADL
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