Tuesday, August 07, 2007

How to Recycle Cell Phones, Printers & Computers

At my children's school, old cell phones have been collected as a fundraiser and as a recycling project. Those were worthwhile drives. Overall around 130 million cell phones are thrown away annually, (about 65,000 tons of waste), according to the April 2007 issue of Real Simple magazine.

With recycling in mind and help from my son Tali ( a great intern), I've put together a list of recycling resources

To Recycle Cell Phones:

To Recycle Computers:

Recycling old computers is tricky, especially if you are paranoid about data on the hard drive. There are, however, a few options for recycling computers, monitors and printers. You can even make a few bucks in the process. Here is a great list that I found in the April issue of Town & Country magazine.

  • Donate computers to schools: Computers for Schools is a Chicago-based organization that refurbishes and donates computers to schools. http://www.pcsforschools.org/
  • Gadgets for underprivileged: Recycles.org connects old computers and gadgets with those who need those items.
  • High-Tech donations: National Cristina Foundation (cristina.org) provides high-tech equipment to underprivileged consumers.
  • Dell Computers and Apple: When you buy new equipment, you can get your old hard drive and monitor recycled free through Dell.com or Apple.
  • Hewlett-Packard: Sell your used equipment (any brand) to HP "for $13 to $34," according to Town & Country magazine. www.hp.com/recycle

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3 comments:

  1. james184411:07 PM

    An important post, thanks. I didn't know that HP products could be recycled back to the company for a small reward.

    My sense is that recycling will become more widespread when it makes financial sense for consumers to engage in recycling behavior. For example, in Oregon we have a bottle and can deposit. When you buy a bottle, you are charged an extra 10 cents. When you return the bottle you get the 10 cents back. In this case people have an incentive to return their bottles.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:37 AM

    Staples has a recycling program, too.

    How the Recycling Program Works

    -- Customers drop off their old equipment at the customer service
    desk at any Staples store, 7 days a week during regular store
    hours; (TV's and large, floor-model copiers are not accepted).

    -- Staples will recycle any manufacturers' products, regardless
    of whether or not it was purchased from Staples, and there's
    no limit on the quantity of equipment that can be recycled.

    -- A recycling fee of $10 per piece of large equipment is charged
    to cover handling, transport, product disassembly and
    recycling. Smaller computer peripherals, such as keyboards and
    mice, will be recycled for free.

    -- Staples Easy Tech(sm) service is on site in all stores to
    transfer data from an old computer to a new one for a fee.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:35 AM

    THANKS for the post! It's great to know and I love the tips from the comments also. I am going to put this on my site.

    Cheers,
    Cindy

    ReplyDelete