"eCycling" Pilot Program in 5 States and D.C.

Mr. Slippery writes: "Several /. stories have discussed the problem of disposing of electonic gear laden with hazardous materials. The EPA, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, DC, and about a dozen corporate sponsors have launched a pilot program to collect and recycle computers and electronics. The objective is to collect data to "develop a long-term cost effective system to remove computers (including monitors & peripherals) and TVs from the municipal waste stream." (My car is now loaded up with five monitors, 3 old HP RISC worksations, several partial PCs, an old TV, and various parts and pieces for the Baltimore County drop-off tomorrow...if any area geeks are looking to scavange old gear this might be a prime opportunity.)"

Cool tech

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame these programs don't put stuff aside so that poor geeks (like - the really poor ones with hand-me-down 386's and the like) can get some old hardware.

Most of these places are just pure break down and destroy. Which makes sense economically, but still.. :)

Perltop [sourceforge.net] - GTK / Perk Desktop environment

Not just computers

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems with capitalism is the utter lack of cern with what happens to a product after it has been used. _Every_ product should have its disposial and / or recycling plan sorted out before it is even sold. Anything else is to cohourt disaster with the earth's resources and environment.

Excellent. But will garbage still kill us?

[Ars-Fartsica]

I'm glad to see people finally start dealing with the very toxic waste produced by computers. The old maxim of waste managemen, "reduce, reuse, recycle" really is apt.

We should be reducing our consumption of computing equipment, and thankfully huge performance gains in recent years allow us to own them longer.

Reuse is a great second consideration. You probably have very high standards for you computer's performance...but I bet you neighbor doesn't! GIve the damn thing away to someone who can make real use of it.

Finally recycle. A great first-step approach here would be to start a business that takes disposed of computers, strips them down and uses the parts to create ultra-low-price boxes that can be resold. For example - consider two individuals discarding PCs because of resource starvation in one aspect of their systems. Jimmy drops of a Pentium with a twenty GB hard drive. Ann drops off a PIII with hardly any disk space. Well, combine Jimmy's disk with Ann's CPU and you have the start of a PC that you could actually sell for maybe $200. Of course you would be obligated to cleanly dispose of the parts you don't use, but you get the idea. I'm surprised someone hasn't tried this.

Donate

[FreeMath]

Others may be able to make use of your old PC. There are many places arround the country, like Freebytes [freebytes.org] in Atlanta.

Philadelphia & Nationwide

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. My passwords/logon ids are currently lost in the bitbucket somewhere right now. . but anyways..

Nationally (Internationally, actually), there is the Share the Technology [sharetechnology.org] site which has a great database setup for registering materials available to give away or wanted (primarily by non-profit organizations/NGO's.)

Then, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA... there is what is known as, well, actually there are SEVERAL efforts. I represent one called the Please Take M.E. [pleasetake.org] (M.E.=Materials Exchange) which is a co-operative membership unwanted materials exchange run under the wing of a non-profit charitable organization called CARP, the Creative Arts Resource Project [pleasetake.org] which accepts unwanted materials of MANY different kinds.

CARP [pleasetake.org] is also involved in a collective which is known as the Philadelphia Reuse Collaborative which is an organization of organizations that include a number of organizations that recycle/reuse old computing equipment, give it away, etc.

CARP [pleasetake.org] is ramping up activity majorly right now, and is actively seeking any potentially interested parties, especially in getting the word out to science teachers, art teachers, and hobbyists of all the fun geek and nerd kinds.. robotics, electronics, etc etc etc. so please get in contact or pass on the word to anybody in the region you think may be interested. If you dream of being SRL, Negativland, or on Robot Wars, Junkyard Wars, etc. then you should get involved with CARP.

AND if that doesn't sell you enough, then how about the fact that pleasetake.org is currently hosted on slackware.com? It's gotta be cool. :D