Recycling Computer Parts: The Adventures of "K"
- Toss, Hoard, or Recycle?
- Where Do Old Monitors Go After the Curb?
- Reuse Lists: What's Wrong with Free Stuff?
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Toss, Hoard, or Recycle?
Choosing to trash or recycle your old computer equipment could be considered environmentally virtuous or disastrous, depending on whether you believe that the eight pounds of lead in your monitor will leach into the groundwater, or that it's evil to send your old computer trash to third-world countries where they dissect it for resalable components and pollute their own environments.
Our neighbor, whom we nicknamed "the environmentalist," drives a car that's not so environmentally friendly, but she's passionate about recycling. She goes hiking for the weekend and asks us take out the trash. She gets upset when we don't take it out early enough. (So do the squirrels next door, who eat the garbage, and the neighborhood bottle pickers.)
The final straw came when we put a computer monitor on the curb for collection. We got an angrily scrawled note saying not to put our monitor with the trash. But our city has a monitor collection service that, if you call them, will send around a truck to pick up the monitor. After a deliberately restrained note to the environmentalist informing her of the city policy, we haven't heard a peep out of her since.