Electronics Recycling This Sunday in Brooklyn
Hi and thanks for reading!
Get your daily dose of A Child Grows sent to your inbox free! Subscribe to our newsletter (email: achildgrows@aweber.com).
If you are a regular reader of A Child Grows, then you know that I have enlisted a few experts to help inform us about all things to do with parenting in their field. Amanda Wiss, founder of Urban Clarity Professional Organizing, is one of those experts. She is going to be sending us her organizing hints from the trenches- no, I mean the closets, basements and clutters that none of us want to admit to! This month she is helping us find out how and when to clear out that electronic clutter!
Amanda Wiss
Ever wonder what to do with your old iPod or laptop when you upgrade to a new one? E-waste (computers, peripherals, personal electronics and batteries) is the fastest-growing class of residential waste in America. Disposal laws are not always clear. Despite good intentions, no one seems to know what to do with it. Consequently, e-waste is one of the largest sources of lead and heavy metals in our landfills.
As a personal organizer I find unused electronics in the homes of my clients all the time. I’ve compiled some suggestions on how to pass along still-functioning equipment, options for recycling broken or obsolete equipment, as well as information on an upcoming opportunity to make it easy to do the right thing.
Where to Recycle your E-waste this Weekend:
Free Electronics Recycling at Habana Outpost in Fort Greene, Brooklyn on Sunday, January 11, 2009 from 10 am – 4 pm
If you have old computers, monitors, printers, TVs or other e-waste, there will be free electronics recycling this weekend in Fort Greene. If you bring a computer, your hard drive will be wiped to Department of Defense standards and any usable materials will be harvested, so you can know that your items are in good hands. For a complete FAQ including the range of items accepted, click here:
Want to recycle e-waste throughout the year? Here are some other nifty options.
If an item still works, you may be able to get cash for it. Check out www.gazelle.com – they’ll pay for shipping and even send you a box.
You can also give items away on your local parenting list serve :for a list see here, Craigslist or Freecycle .
Goodwill: Thanks to a partnership with Dell, you can drop off unwanted computers from any manufacturer at any Goodwill store in the city for free. Proceeds from the resale value of donations will benefit Goodwill’s job program, and those that can’t be sold will be recycled responsibly. Very important: your hard drive must be wiped as they won’t do it for you. For more info visit the Reconnect website.
Staples: For a fee of $10 per piece of large equipment, (computers, monitors, laptops, printers, and faxes) Staples will recycle your e-waste. Smaller items, like keyboards, are free.
Just bring your items to the counter of any Staples store. For more details, check out this link.
Won’t it feel good to reclaim that space under your desk where that old printer was? The time to recycle those electronics is now!
Amanda Wiss, Founder of Urban Clarity, is a professional organizer and mom of two toddlers who like to play with “decommissioned” cell phones. She helps families who are feeling overwhelmed simplify their space and set up systems to support the chaos. To check out Amanda’s resource listing on the blog and reviews of her services, click here.
Related Article:
I do hope that this event jump-starts an eco-friendly habit to most of us who have piles of used paper documents and other products and they have no idea how to properly dispose of them. Fortunately, we are presented with various kinds of recycling and reusing option for paper – they can be shredded and they can be also be used for many purposes – as well as plastic materials.
You cannot just throw them with the rest of your trash. We need to be properly informed on how to safely dispose of our old hard drives so that they will not just be added to the pile that we accumulate annually in our landfills. It is good to know that even well known athletes are making a statement that they do care about the environment.