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Yes, your old PC can be recyled.
RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—If your house is anything like mine, it gained a little weight over the holidays: a few new items of clothing, some new electronics, more books and magazines, and extra holiday trimmings…. So much new stuff comes into my house around the holidays that by the New Year, I'm ready to put my home on a diet and give myself some breathing room, which can really lower stress and anxiety levels.
Yet, often, our motivation to clear the decks gets blocked by a significant obstacle: What am I going to do with this stuff? We all have items that are too functional to just throw out, and decluttering your home shouldn't mean sending perfectly good household items to a landfill. That dilemma makes it all too easy to put off the purge. Follow this recycling advice so you can move forward and send your unwanted stuff somewhere to be reused, not trashed.
Holiday Lights
Hopefully, you've taken down and recycled your tree by now. But what about the lights, which may still be dangling on your porch or, perhaps, sitting in a box at the bottom of the attic steps? Functional light strings, ornaments, garlands, and other seasonal items you no longer want seem to move fast on FreeCycle.org, so start there. When light strings start to fray and wires become exposed, it's time to think about replacing them with energy-efficient LED lights. Send your old strings to HolidayLed.com for free recycling and a 15 percent off coupon, which you can use to take advantage of post-holiday prices on festive lighting.
Good point!
Even erasing every file you can see doesn't actually remove your data from your hard disk. It is still there and can be recovered unless it is written over or reformatted. If you have any doubts that your information could be used in nefarious ways that could com back to haunt you stick with a technorecycling service such as GreenDisk who pledges to "safely and securely destroy your old data" and will "send you a certificate of destruction supported by an audit trail report that demonstrates compliance with regulatory requirements, company policies or just your own personal preferences."
More resources
The Green America greenpages http://www.greenamericatoday.org/pubs/greenpages/ just crossed my desk with some more great resources that may help you move toward zero-waste:
If you live in a major city you may be able to hire your removal and sorting out to a commercial service such as IReUse Hauling http://www.ireusehauling.com/ a junk removal service that aims to keep as much junk out of the landfill as possible, or you may be able to find a similar service that services your area. 1-800-GOT-JUNK http://www.1800gotjunk.com/ also claims to recycle as much of what they haul away as possible.
Goodwill http://www.goodwill.org/ accepts a wide range of working and broken items, fixes some, uses others for training, and recycles what can be recycled from broken down items and worn out textiles.
The Steel Recycling institute http://www.recycle-steel.org/cgi-bin/sridbq3.pl can help you locate local steel recycling options.
recycling computers
A cautionary note needs to be interjected here. Be sure the hard drive has been reformatted or otherwise scrubbed before turning loose of your computer. All of the passwords, account numbers, tax forms, etc. that you have ever entered on it are probably still there, as well as pictures, documents, etc. It's a bonanza for an identity thief to get hold of an old computer. Several years ago, I collected old but still serviceable computers and stripped them down to their operating systems and nothing else, then installed a whole bunch of freeware and shareware Bible games on them and donated them to the kids' Sunday School classes at my church. They made a big hit with everyone.