Recycle your E-Waste throughout April in NYC

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By Nick Normal
Posted 2011/04/03 @ 4:30 am
Category Electronics, Energy

The Lower East Side Ecology Center in NYC is sponsoring e-waste recycling events throughout all five boroughs for the month of April (aka “Earth Month”). You can find a list of their drop-off sites here, and their FAQ about acceptable items and procedures here. I actually almost never throw away my own e-waste. I still have boxes of floppy drives, old CPUs, and even RJ11 wires by the bundle in my basement! I figure I can always make puppets from my old components, or up-cycle them into some art installation. But starting on April 1, 2015, it will become illegal for New York state residents to throw away their electronic waste, so now’s as good a time as any to start learning what to do with your electronics at the end of their lifespan.

In the Maker Shed

5 Responses to Recycle your E-Waste throughout April in NYC

Matt Richardson on April 3rd, 2011 at 1:58 pm said:

Thanks for posting, Nick! I’m the same way you are; I can’t throw anything electronic away. Though I don’t have much space, so maybe I should think about getting rid of a few things.

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- Gregg on April 3rd, 2011 at 4:33 pm said:
  
  Like what? In most cases I would accept almost anything DEC related, and even a few SUN related items. But now I don’t know.
  
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- Anonymous on April 4th, 2011 at 3:30 am said:
  
  there’s always room for your stuff in my basement – ha!
  
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Gregg on April 3rd, 2011 at 4:32 pm said:

And normally I have been bringing everything that needs to be recycled, two printers, and two old Dell computers who ran out and did their best to Staples. This confirms what I heard on Friday on WQXR-FM about it.

NYC Sanit Department is unqualified to enforce that law.

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Jeremy Harton on April 4th, 2011 at 9:01 pm said:

I take issue with recycling programs to some extent and people’s idea of art. I personally believe that there is no need to throw away a lot of the technology that it could still be relegated to other purposes. For instance, there are plenty of third world countries that have very little technology. Sure, it’d be great if they had IPv6 and the latest and greatest, but surely if we gave them mid-range to fairly high-end single core computers and 10mbit access to the Internet that would still be a quantum leap in plenty of places.

A lot of times, stuff might get completely reduced to materials that is still far on the good side of usability. We throw out or convert into art what is far from unusable in it’s present form. Our mad, tech-crazed rush is a major waste and poor use of resources. While a 486 is probably too old for most people’s average use these days, a Pentium III (3)/IV (4) is still fairly usable provided that model has no evil quirks and it’s not clearly headed to being broken (i.e. already has specific problems that are not related to merely being outdated).

Further, some of us love retro computers and stuff which is harder to come by when every person insists upon recycling (as in materials reclamation) anything and everything. Also, how do you have a computer museum if there are no old computers on hand? Or how does a poor person get a computer at all, if all of the new stuff is very expensive (for them at least), and the rich people carefully dispose of their old stuff and never let those let fortunate have it?

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