Recycle your dead monitors, old computers, etc., at Office Depot for Free!

[LongCoolMother]

im pretty sure office depot doesnt just toss them out. they recycle them. HP (hewlett packard) is also a sponsor/partner in this program and im almost sure a large corporation like HP wouldnt just dump stuff without responsibility.

 

[1renovation]

ha michigan folk im taking all recycle computers /tv /stereos /monitors and office equipment .
im doing it with goverment approval
mention anandtech -and there will be no charge to you .
for me to take them off your hands !
im only covering oakland county michigan at this time but will be exspanding to cover the
tri-countys !

 

[ivwshane]

Thanks for the post!!!

My friend gave me his 17" because it would only go into stand by, I thought I could fix it but I couldn't. I thought I was stuck with a piece of junk but then I saw this post!! So I took in the broken monitor today to be recycled, while I was there another customer was doing the same thing. He had a 17" as well and I asked him if it worked, he said yes and that the only reason he was throwing it out was because he just bought a 19" lcd. Anyways, so I ended up taking (he let me have it) his monitor and it indeed works great!!!

So now I have a nice working 17" monitor for my servers instead of a half working 15"


Thanks again for the post!!!


One mans trash is another mans treasure

 

[KerriAnn]

wow, that's hella cool. glad i (indirectly) helped you out!

 

[Swrath239]

I work at one of the OD stores and what they do is put them on a palet and load it up then ship it to the local college and they ship it to hp. Other stores that are near hp centers just send the stuff to them direct.

 

[Chaingang]

:beer::beer: BUUUURRRPPPP

 

[hhpwang]

For folks who live in the bay area, a good alternative is the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (http://www.accrc.org/). They charge a small fee for recycling, but a lot of the hardware that they receive gets rebuilt/repaired and then shipped off as actual working machines to people who need them. The last time I was there they had huge pallets of computers with industrial strengh shrink wrap sitting on the warehouse floor. The guy who was accepting my old 486 tower, monitor, and printer pointed to one and said "Those are going to a school in El Salvador, and those are going to a school in Paraguay." I thought that was pretty amazing. I think maybe they charged me $25 for almost a full trunkload of old hardware.

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: jgreg
Throw em away in the dumpster!?!? You know how much lead is in a monitor?
A good read for all who doesn't know about how important computer recycling is:
http://www.ban.org/Library/ghosts_in.html

The result is that the air, land and water on which local people depend have all been poisoned. Local well water is already undrinkable, even after boiling, and fresh supplies must be trucked in from the town of Chan Dim 15 kilometres away. According to the report: "It is extremely likely that due to the presence of PVC or brominated flame retardants in wire insulation, the emissions and ashes from such burning will contain high levels of both brominated and chlorinated dioxins and furans - two of the most deadly persistent organic pollutants. It is also highly likely that cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are present in the emissions and ash."

"Compared to the rest of China, this place has more miscarriages," says Doctor Li Fai-ping, who works in the maternity ward at the local Chao Yang Yiu Fai Hospital. "Babies simply die in the wombs. There are several cases a month." She adds that the Government has done nothing to assess the damage being done by the e-waste industry. "No scientists have come here to test the effects [of the pollution on the community]. We are sent to work here, we are scared too." "The fact that nobody knows of the dangers is the most depressing thing," says BAN researcher Jim Puckett, co-author of the report.

"I don't care whether this work is harmful or not," says Tai, cracking open another cartridge and being enveloped by a cloud of toner. "As long as it makes me money."

Wow, that's so sad. That's not the article that I had read, but the name of the town in China is the same one, so I'm pretty sure that it is talking about the same thing.

It's scary how dangerous and toxic computers are to humanity and the planet. No wonder I can't bring myself to just toss out my old junker machines.

 

[freshspace]

I take my old computer junk and lug it to the roofs of buildings and drop them off the edge, sometimes 30 stories up. It makes for some cool entertainment. I hit some old lady's wheelchair with a 17" dead Idek monitor once when she got up to get a drink of water in the plaza below. Man that scared the crap out of her. Her depends must have been soiled good.. I've squashed a few rat dogs pretty good too. I could hear the yelps all the way to the roof.

If you got enough stuff and people and two adjoining roofs you can try mid air collisions - those are slick cause the people below hear the noise before the stuff hits and they all start scrambling in terror. Pretty funny stuff..

-Crazy Eddie...
-----------------------------------------------------------

I knew you were a sick racist bastard. You're name is John! Why are you hiding behind "Crazy Eddie"?

 

[chewyboy]

dont go to OD, if you need to get rid of older systems check out local charaties and churches first. even if you are not a christian i know a lot of them deal with local needy families that could use the systems. it goes back to your local area and ends up helping someone at the same time. anyway check with local places that might have a use for these types of things, you might be suprised how much a family that doesn't have a computer appreciates a p166 with a 14" monitor.

 

[0roo0roo]

so do you just walk in the front door with it? or is it in the back or something?

and no, i can't donate mine, it turns off every 20 seconds and the image is faded so far it doesn't look like its on almost.

 

[cyrax78]

I'd take advantage of this service.. except my city decided to pay over a million extra each year to allow the throwing away of large items. With a populartion of 80,000 and over half that are kids and stuff that don't pay taxes, it really bites.

 

[Joekerr1]

The Ad said, "Now until Labor day,...", that they will accept items.

Well today is Labor day, and I called the store in Temecula, CA and there manager said Saturday was the last day they would accept items..

What kinda of crap advertising is that? :|

 

[568overclocked]

is there any other place that will accept old computer stuff to dispose for free...i finally was able to clean out my garage over the weekend and didn't realize that the last day was labor day. i found my old 386 20mhz computer w/ 4mb of ram and 65mb hd and 512k of video..also found a dot matrix printer

 

[jgreg]

Well, if you don't find a free place to dispose of it, please keep em in your garage till something else comes up, or dispose of it at a cheap, reputable place. I feel that this is an important issue that we all have overlooked too easily, to an extent.

I feel guilty for throwing stuff out years ago, I pay to dispose of my stuff now at a local, reputable place in Jersey.

-Greg

 

[wthomas206]

I live in Tacoma, WA and I just called Office Depot and was told the monitor recycling process was abolished after the labor day holiday. I actually talked to two different stores to confirm.

 

[KidViciou$]

my municipal dump/recycling center accepts all sorts of trash including electronics for free. i dropped off like 7 systems and a few monitors a few weeks ago for free. i saw a lot of printers and tvs and monitors there, two dumpsters were overflowing

 

[Adam8281]

Speaking of recycling, a couple weeks ago I was at Best Buy and noticed they have a bin just inside the first set of doors where you can recycle old cell phones. I poked around in there and found a pretty nice looking phone will all accessories, and 2 batteries. I took it home, tested the batteries, both were good for over 100 hours. I then put the phone up for sale on Ebay and got over $60 for it! Do you know if companies mind if you take things out of their recycle piles. I haven't done this again at Best Buy because I worried maybe their security guys near the front would get upset if they knew I was doing this. Has anyone had experience with reselling recyclables?

 

[tbalon]

Yea, I took advantage of this weeks ago after I heard about it on the radio. I took in a 21 monitor, a 15" monitor and a 27" tv that had been hit by lighting ( I live in Florida) also several outdated cases old scanner and if I remember right the rules were "one item per person per day", so I had my kids help me take some stuff in one day. I would just grab a cart and wheel it into the front of the store and say to whomever happened to be there that this item was to be recycled and they would say "OK" and hand me a paper outlining the program. That was pretty much how it worked. I also would drop off a printer cartridge or two for recycling and get some free paper.....what a deal. Too bad this deal had to end, I hope they do it again every year.

 

[KidViciou$]

when people drop stuff off for recycling, it becomes property of the company. therefore by you taking the cell phone, you essentially stole property from the company which is a felony. be happy you got away with it, and don't do it again, nice find though!

at my dump, they have a big sign that says that once it's been dumped, it becomes property of the local government

 

[Adam8281]

It's a felony?! It doesn't seem like it should be that way if people are dropping off their trash! I suppose I can understand it at a dump, where the whole concept of that institution is that you dump stuff there. It seems logical that the dump might have some interest in profiting off of what you dump there, and that is fine. But a retail exists to sell merchandise, not to profit off of trash. Even if it is technically a crime to take garbage or recyclables from a retail store, that seems like the type of thing the store shouldn't frown upon since the collection of that trash is peripheral to their purpose as a business. Plus, as you say, at the dump there is a sign saying don't take anything, but at Best Buy there is nothing of the sort near the recycling containers. But, I have thought that to avoid any situations, I shoud maybe ask the manager whether I can take recyclable equipment that I am interested in.

 

[Nutzo]

I already recycled all my old 486 & Pentuim's a few years ago on Ebay

 

[PandaBear]

My cheap ass company is just keep putting their dead PC and monitors (since 286) in the back of the warehouse, 30 of them total at least, so I am driving to OD one at a time to save the environment. We have no cash, so it will just sit there until it went bankrupt and our landlord just throw them out.

Because the company is not really paying us salary on time and our long distance phone line goes out all the time, our janitor go on strike all the time, we ran out of toilet paper all the time, and the UPS guys walks in everyday with COD saying "Sam, I need money, show me the money....." every day.

One time when I was dropping off, a guy give me his perfectly working P2 400 with a 17 inch monitor. I got it back to my company and it instantly became the fastest PC in the department, literally.

The name of the company is:

Integrated Dynamics Engineering
203A Lawerence Drive
Livermore, CA 94550
USA

377 University Avenue
Westwood, MA 02090
USA

Our boss is a cheapass that still owe one of our employee $17k, and another employee 5 month worth of travel expense ($15k). Pay our medical expense late and our insurance almost got cancelled, and took $ out of people's 401k and didn't deposit it into their 401k account (illegal).

Never attempt to buy from us.

Integrated Dynamics Engineering

 

[KidViciou$]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, damn man, that really sux. sounds like how interplay has been operating.


adam, i was pretty sure that companies don't lik u taking their recyclable trash, but i guess if they have no sign, it *MIGHT* be fair game, but do as you suggested and ask the manager just in case because even if you are unaware of the law, you can still be held accountable

 

[tyim]

Originally posted by: PandaBear
My cheap ass company is just keep putting their dead PC and monitors (since 286) in the back of the warehouse, 30 of them total at least, so I am driving to OD one at a time to save the environment. We have no cash, so it will just sit there until it went bankrupt and our landlord just throw them out.

Because the company is not really paying us salary on time and our long distance phone line goes out all the time, our janitor go on strike all the time, we ran out of toilet paper all the time, and the UPS guys walks in everyday with COD saying "Sam, I need money, show me the money....." every day.

One time when I was dropping off, a guy give me his perfectly working P2 400 with a 17 inch monitor. I got it back to my company and it instantly became the fastest PC in the department, literally.

The name of the company is:

Integrated Dynamics Engineering
203A Lawerence Drive
Livermore, CA 94550
USA

377 University Avenue
Westwood, MA 02090
USA

Our boss is a cheapass that still owe one of our employee $17k, and another employee 5 month worth of travel expense ($15k). Pay our medical expense late and our insurance almost got cancelled, and took $ out of people's 401k and didn't deposit it into their 401k account (illegal).

Never attempt to buy from us.

Integrated Dynamics Engineering

...

 

[Melectricus]

^ What to say? Someone must know better than I how direct this guy to some legal recourse.