How Do You Dispose Your Dinosaur or Unwanted Electronics

In the year 2010, the typical American family spent an average of $1179.00 per month on electrical equipment.   

With that statistic in mind, I can’t help but wonder where our “dinosaur” electronics are ending up.  Since a personal computer will not biodegrade or decompose - the Earth is becoming littered with electronics.  Not only computers but telephones, mp3 players, voice recorders, televisions, etc. are included in the “electronics” title.

How do you dispose of your electronics? 

                                                 

The earth’s soil littered with these potentially hazardous items - is not a safe or productive means of disposal and can wreak havoc on our ecosystem. 

The average desktop pc can have metals including but not limited to;  aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, palladium, platinum, selenium, silver, and zinc.  Along with these metals, the pc can contain potentially hazardous engineered plastics.

This brings to light the need for safe and efficient waste management of these products.  As equally important, the need and education for reusing, recycling and up cycling is a necessity for the average electronics user.  

Some ideas we can do to cut down on our own electronics waste are; 

*refurbish the product and/or upgrade the components in the product to bring it up-to-date.  *dismantle the item and recycle it’s components which often results in a financial return (copper, aluminum, gold).  

Many creative ways to up cycle your electronics can be found with just a bit of research, things like turning your old pc into a jukebox/recorder box.

Check out this website for pix of a upcycled motherboard into a clock- http://www.pacebutler.com/blog/computer-recycling-mac-g3-wallclock/