As I mentioned in a post the other day, the Plug-In to your Community group held an event for recycling computers on Saturday. It was well attended as the photo at the right suggests. I was really surprised by how many people took advantage of this opportunity. The line of cars snaked through the Best Buy parking lot and eventually split into two separate lines as we drove by the collection point so the army of volunteers could unloaded the equipment we’d brought for recycling. My car had the back seat, the passenger seat, and the trunk full of equipment.
Joining in this event marked the first time I have ever disposed of a computer that I have bought, so I experienced a bit of nostalgia about “letting go” of my old friends. However, beginning my de-cluttering with my old computers signifies a step in the right direction, I think. If I can let go of these electronic friends, I can certainly turn loose the old clothing and shoes that crowd my closets and will never be worn again. I turned in four CPUs, three monitors, four keyboards, two old dot-matrix printers, and one mouse. I could have, of course, disposed of more mice, but by the time I had gathered together this pile of equipment I was too exhausted to tackle finding the mice.
All-in-all it didn’t really take too much time to get through the long lines and off-load the equipment I had brought. I got there around 10:10 a.m. and was home by about 10:40 a.m. Of course, once I got home I realized that I had other computers I could have and should have taken to the event. I shudder to think how much of my income I have spent on such things during the last 25 years, but I feel good about having disposed of some of it in a safe and environmentally friendly way.