Recently, I found and downloaded a free iPhone app called iRecycle by Earth911.com . It uses the iPhone’s location to show you the closet recyclers for whatever items you enter (plastic bags, batteries, aluminum, etc). After entering “computers”, I was pleased to see, just down the street, a new organization that I wasn’t previously aware of, Free Geek Chicago.

Free Geek is…

FreeGeek Chicago is a not-for-profit community organization that recycles used computers and parts to provide functional computers, education, internet access and job skills training to the underserved communities of Chicago in exchange for community service.

Sounds great, so I stopped by. It’s a great setup, with lots of activity, they were friendly, and they meet basically all of my preferred computer recycling criteria:

• they take just about anything computer related, including both functioning and non-functioning stuff, cables & cords, external devices, networking equipment, etc.
• what they can use, they refurbish/repurpose for training and donation to needy people and organizations.
• what they can’t use, the responsibly recycle.
• they do full data wipes on all received hard drives
• they’re a full blooded 501(c)(3), so they can provide tax receipts for donations
• they’re nice

I’m pretty sure they’re going to be my one-stop-dropoff for computer related recycling and donation. And although their website is awkwardly worded  (something they admitted to me) regarding requested donations to accomapny dropped off equipment, they clarified their position as follows: the receyclers they go to charge _them_ by the pound. If you bring in a lot of heavy stuff that they can’t use, they have to pay money to recycle it. So, a voluntary donation would be appreciated (bring them a box of stuff, and hand them $5 or $10 to be nice is my suggestion). For CRT displays, and some other HEAVY items, their required fees are…

• Monitors ($15.00 ea.)
• Terminals ($10.00 ea.)
• Printers ($10.00 ea.)
• CPU/CRT combos [like iMacs] ($15.00 ea.)

Here’s a nice video showing the location and the people…

So, now there’s no excuse not to recycle and donate your old computer 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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

I’ve been on a personal battle against piles of paper, as have most of my clients. Using the Mac to run your business has made that easier, but most people, aren’t aware of the free, already built in tools in Mac OS X that help you do that easily. Also, there are a few great 3rd party hardware and software tools that I use and recommend to help take things further. Here are a few of the things I do and recommend to help keep paper to a minimum…

1) Save As PDF… Whenever I buy something online and am asked to “Print a copy for your records”, or come across a web page that I know I’ll refer to later, but am afraid it will change or disappear from the web, I DO choose “Print”. But at the print dialog, I DON’T press the final “Print” button in the lower right — I go to the PDF menu in the lower left, and choose “Save As PDF…”

This “prints” to a PDF file. I can then use Spotlight to search for any text in the PDF later, so it is easy to find. I just saved a tree!

2) Use Spotlight. Really, that little magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your screen is your quick access to Spotlight’s search engine. Its a powerful tool you should take the time to learn.

(You can also activate it by pressing command-space on your keyboard. This is the same “engine” as command-F for “Find”, but in a more convenient place.) So why use it? Under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Spotlight was slow and didn’t work very well — it didn’t live up to the hype. Under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, they fixed it, and it is now speedy and efficient. Spotlight searches _everything_ in your user folder. Not just file names, but the contents of the files. If I just saved a PDF of a web page about an  automatic pet feeder I could use Spotlight to find it by entering automatic cat feed… and before I was done typing, it would show me that PDF as a result. That is a LOT faster than sifting through piles of paper print-outs. Spotlight will find the contents of any file that has text, so PDFs, Word documents, text files, emails (yes, it will find stuff in your email messages), Address Book, etc. That’s strike two against paper!

3) Scan stuff in. Although I produce less paper, I still get it coming to me all the time. My technique to deal with most of it is to scan it in as images/PDFs, and then perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert it to searchable text. In the past, doing this with conventional flatbed scanners and graphics-oriented software would be tedious and time consuming. These days, there is a great selection of hardware and software that are focused on doing these things for documents and text. My favorite piece of hardware for this, bar none, is the Fujitsu ScanSanap S510M. For about $450, this this blazes through client checks, stacks of invoices, and business cards, turning them all into PDFs, or sending them wherever you’d like, or to whatever application you designate. You can save presets, so, for example, you want to do low resolution and send it to a folder for purchase orders, but do high resolution and send to ReceiptWallet for receipts.

Oh yeah, ReceiptWallet, for people who want to avoid the “box-o-receipts” at the end of the year, is great software for receiving those PDFs, either “printed” from a web page, or scanned in with your ScanSnap, and storing the image, and allowing you to input the receipt category, type, amount, etc. It will even try to read/OCR your receipt, and fill in the amounts for you. A great product that has made tax time a breeze.

Another product to tame those mountains of business cards, and get them into Daylite or Address Book, is NeatReceipts for Mac. Like ReceiptWallet, it will scan and organize receipts for you, but will also read business cards in, and send them over to Address Book. A huge time saver after a trade show or large meeting, when you haul a stack of cards back with you to the office. NeatReceipts is also bundled with a small, very portable scanner. The scanner isn’t as fast as the ScanSnap, but is tiny, portable, fits in a bag easily, or sits on a desk without hogging too much room. Now you can shred all that stuff and use it for packing material.

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So that’s a quick roundup of my techniques for fighting the war on paper that have been working for me and my clients. These tools are just the beginning, and please feel free to ask me if you’d like to learn more!