So you’ve just upgraded to a brand-new computer.  It’s fast and has a nice flat-panel monitor, and you’re really excited about it.  You unplug your old computer and set up the new one.  But now, what do you do with the old one?  You could give it to a friend or relative, or you could donate it to charity, but what if it’s too old for that, or what if it doesn’t work anymore?  What then?

A lot of people will just throw their old computer (or other electronic equipment, such as a TV or stereo system) in the trash.  But that’s a bad idea, because computer equipment contains toxic materials such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and antimony, all of which are toxic to some degree and can contaminate the environment, especially groundwater, if equipment is dumped in landfills.  On top of that, many materials found in computers, including plastics and many metals, are easily recyclable.  So the best plan if you want to get rid of old electronic equipment is to get it to an e-waste recycler.

Keep in mind, though, that there are good and bad e-waste recyclers.  The good ones will shred circuit boards and reuse the materials; convert still-working CRT picture tubes into TVs and other types of electronics for the developing world; and send anything they can’t recycle on their own away to be smelted.  The bad ones, though, will say they are doing this stuff but will really ship everything overseas and dump it in developing countries.  The best way to know that you’re dealing with a legitimate electronic recycler is to bring your old equipment to an event sponsored by your local government or a technology-oriented organization, both of whom will have screened the recycling firm that they use.

I work for such a technology-oriented organization, and we partnered with a few other people to hold an e-waste recycling event in honor of Earth Day this past weekend.  It took a fair amount of planning - for a couple of months ahead of time, we had to make sure we had all the logistics worked out and that we had appropriate publicity so that people would know our event was happening and would come by with their old junk.  However, it went really well; we had lots of people come by, sometimes more than once, with carloads of old electronic equipment.  Some of it was still working and so we will be giving it out to schools and nonprofits, but whatever we couldn’t use, our electronic recycler carted away.  The event ran for two days, from 1:00-5:00 pm each day; we ended up filling two-thirds of a box truck on Friday and one and a quarter box trucks on Saturday. 

One thing that is important to remember with electronic recycling is that it costs money to get everything broken down and recycled.  Our recycler charged about $5.00 a monitor or TV, which we paid for out of our budget.  But often e-waste events will make you pay a fee for each monitor you recycle.  This problem has been partially addressed by California, who has a fee that you pay up-front when buying new electronics to cover the cost of recycling them down the line.  But until other states implement a similar plan, there is no free lunch and the money to recycle everything will have to come from somewhere.

With that said, it’s worth it to spend a bit of money to keep our environment clean and make it so our landfills don’t fill up so fast.  I encourage everyone to recycle their e-waste rather than throwing it away.