I always look for ways to operate my business in green and responsible ways. I forgo using a car, and take public transportation instead. I encourage using PDFs instead of printing out paper, and send PDF invoices. I encourage clients to take advantage of remote screen sharing for training and troubleshooting. But for people like myself, and environmentally conscious clients, what remains a big problem is the build up of tech trash: old computers, obsolete printers, extra/unused cables, depleted batteries of various types, etc. Although Macs tend to have a much longer useful lifespan than Windows PCs, they too eventually wear out, become obsolete, and are replaced with newer, shinier models. So how do we deal with all this stuff?

The old answer was just to toss it in the trash. But increasingly, there are more options for donating and recycling these items. Sometimes the old machines are still useful, and can be donated. And almost all of them contain useful, recyclable components, such as copper, gold, aluminum, plastic. Some of them contain hazardous materials that need to be properly disposed of.

But the problem comes not from wanting to do it, but figuring out how. Depending on what items you have, some services will take them, some won’t. The matrix of who will take what can get pretty confusing. So to help straighten that out, I’ve put together a list and description of resources that I have found that are available to people in the greater Chicago area. This list is by no means complete, and if anyone has suggestions for services that I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll update this list. My goal here is to provide clear information to help make recycling and donating the mountain of tech trash easy.

IMPORTANT!!!! DELETING DATA!!!

NEVER give away or drop off anything with a hard drive (a desktop computer, laptop, external storage, etc), that has EVER stored personal data of any kind — UNLESS IT HAS BEEN PROPERLY ERASED OR DISABLED FIRST. You may feel that “there wasn’t anything important on that drive”, but I bet you’d be surprised. If you ever put an old password in an email or text file, recorded you bank account info, or other personal data, it is just lying there, waiting for an identity thief to come across it. Copying your files to the operating system trash and emptying does NOT destroy data. To properly clear data off a hard drive, it must be reformatted and multi-pass erased to ensure a secure level of data removal. And even though some of the services mentioned in this article offer data erasure/destruction, you are much better off making sure the data is erased before the device leaves your control.

How to do this? Ask your friendly neighborhood computer consultant for help. If the hard drive is still functional, and might be able to be used by someone, have a computer professional perform a multi-pass data erasure and reformat. There are free tools built into Mac OS X that will do this. And if the hard drive is broken, and is only suitable for recycling, drill, put a screw, or put a nail, through the platters.

The Chart

Computers for schools

For a few years, I’ve been telling clients about “Computers for Schools” as a great place to drop off computers and computer components for reuse and recycling. Originally started as a charity, and located on Chicago’s northwest side, they are now a for-profit business. Their services haven’t changed: they will take almost anything you drop off, and if they can re-purpose it, it is donated to schools. If they can’t, they will recycle the components. (They also guarantee DOD specification data erasure of any hard drives or data storage devices/media). Recently, there have been quite a few other options that have popped up that may be more convenient or appropriate to your recycling needs.

Goodwill Industries

Goodwill Industries has an E-Cycling program operated in partnership with Dell. The will accept anything from desktop computers to personal electronics.

City of Chicago

The City has stepped up its support for (or is at least communicating it better) accepting old computers and electronics. [ http://tinyurl.com/laom85 ] . As part of the city’s Household Chemicals & Computer Recycling program, there is a permanent drop-off facility on Goose Island, 1150 N. North Branch Street, and is open…

• Tuesday (7:00am – 12:00pm)
• Thursday (2:00pm- 7:00pm)
• The first Saturday of every month (8:00am – 3:00pm)
• If a holiday falls on one of those days, the facility will not be open.

They also promise to do data wipes… “All computers dropped off at the facility will have their hard drives wiped clean before any work is done.”

Radio Shack

Radio Shack has an extensive Trade-In Program that will give you Radio Shack gift cards in return for your items. They then recycle the items you trade in.

Walgreens and the Chicago Public Libraries

Walgreens, which by now are just about everywhere in Chicago, and the Chicago Public Library system are drop-off points for the Chicago Recycling Coalitions battery recycling program. All locations for both entities will accept rechargeable and non-rechargeable dry-cell batteries.

CD Recycling Center of America

The hardest one for me to have found was the recycling of CDs and DVDs. I located the CD Recycling Center of America, and they will accept any dics you mail to them. They do it for both individuals and corporations. Until I hear otherwise, this is my current method of choice.

More Information

A lot of this was gathered from the aforementioned Chicago Recycling Coalition’s website. They’ve been doing a great job on keeping up on recycling options in Chicago. If you’re interested in learning more, they’re definitely a great first stop. In addition, for battery related options and info, The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) is a great source of information as well.

Tags: Donate, Green, Recycling

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under Hot Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.