Spring Cleaning for free disposal of computers and scrap - Earth Day

[DaveLembke]

Reduced my computer count from 18 to 9 computers through a local annual FREE recycle event through a computer repair shop. They advertised free disposal of computers and with participating in this event you get entered into a drawing to win $50 grocery store card and get a $50 coupon for $50 off a new computer through them. I filled out to try my luck at $50 in free groceries as well as brought the coupon to work in case anyone here could use $50 off of a new Apple computer or something.

Last year I missed out on this opportunity to get rid of computers and computer scrap for free.

Filled trunk of my car with 5 desktop computers and in one of the larger gaming cases that is like 12 years old i stuffed some old single-core laptops in there. Got rid of a boat anchor HP Server that weighed a ton and back in the day it was a powerful server, but the double dual-core server just isnt worth powering anymore plus its main board has the capacitor plague with blown, swollen and leaking capacitors so it wasnt very stable.

I pulled all the hard drives from these systems which I will retain and take a sledge hammer to them when getting rid of them some day. The DVD Drives, Video Cards, RAM, and some of the CPUs that could be used in future or sold onto Ebay and dont take up much space to retain in case I can use them, I saved. Got rid of so many used keyboards and corded mice that saw better days and I have plenty of space brand new keyboards in original boxes still after buying 10 for $50 off of ebay of HP Business Class Keyboards 7 years ago. Still have 6 of those still in the original box and I like the feel of them.

I have a rats nest of power adapters, supplies for laptops, and other various cables that i need to dig through 3 boxes of and get rid of most of that. Almost all my IDE and Floppy cables went to this free disposal as well.

The people there accepting the free recycling of computers I dont think they expected a full trunk of obsolete and under powered junk systems.

So its officially Spring, and did my much needed Spring Cleaning to drop my computer count in half and get rid of unneeded computer scrap for free.

Anyone looking to get rid of computers for free can check with their computer shops in their area and see if they have any annual events for free disposal or what they charge for getting rid of it for you. At one time someone said that Bestbuy was disposing of computers and TVs. I brought a TV to Bestbuy and they greeted me with sorry we changed policy and no longer take CRT TV sets. The good thing is that it was a small 13 inch color TV and I didnt break my back to bring in a 200 lb 32" CRT, so I just propped it up onto my shoulder and brought it back out to my car and paid $5 for disposal of it at local dump.

Here is the event I took advantage of: http://spci.com/earth-day-2017-free-computer-recycling/

[patio]

Good on you...

[49 M]

Good deal. It costs $15 per monitor, $5 for tower, and $5 for a keyboard here. My guess is they forgot about the mouse or there would be another $5 charge.

[Geek-9pm]

In addition to lead and mercury, there are a number of other metals and other elementally materials that are toxic. As for plastics, some compounds are very dangerous and do not break down in a landfill.

[DaveLembke]

Good deal. It costs $15 per monitor, $5 for tower, and $5 for a keyboard here. My guess is they forgot about the mouse or there would be another $5 charge.

If wanting to avoid costs of disposal you can either take advantage of like I did for the Earth Day Recycle Program where they take stuff for free or lower cost to get rid of it, or get rid of your computer for free to someone who wants it that might be able to use it. For 30 years I have gotten computers and pieces and parts and software and cables and extra keyboards and mice for free. I got even more stuff when people found out about my business. With my business many people liked being able to cut corners and fix their computer with that power supply that I got for free that I would charge $5 for plus installation. The little amount of money charged on the good parts I figured would cover the cost of disposal for the pieces and parts that are misfits ( unwanted ) or bad. At one point I had 27 computers most of them good but older and so while that computer doesnt really have a market for sale to someone, power supply replacements were the most needed component as well as inexpensive RAM upgrades and optical drive replacements. The motherboards and CPUs were not really needed much, but one guy back 10 years ago had his computer die and I assisted in migrating his data over to a healthy computer. Gave him the entire healthy computer for $5 and just charged for the data migration from his old computer that had a partially blown motherboard ( leaky capacitors ) which would freeze up to a healthy computer that didnt have the capacitor plague also running Windows XP Home. He was VERY HAPPY to get a computer replacement for $5 and I took his old computer in as trade. Tossed out the motherboard to recycle after grabbing all useful parts off of it. I had a reputation as a computer shop that was like a used car dealership trade in the old clunker that has issues and drive on out with the other used one that is healthy .... but the good analogy used car dealership that doesnt sell lemons. 

If you pull your hard drive from this computer and retain this so no one else gets your personal data, and then offer the rest of the computer for free.... I am sure if advertised for free, must take all, you will find someone who grabs it up for free. 


Out my way there is a Weekly Flea Market newspaper that only costs to list items for sale that are $100 or more.... Lots of people use it as a means to unload stuff for free onto others who can use it.

Additionally there are websites like Freecycle that you can list stuff for free and people locally can contact you to pick it up and problem solved with no cost at all. I use freecycle to get things as well as get rid of things that are still good to someone who can use them. https://www.freecycle.org/