Recycling Computers

I just got back from drop­ping off three mon­it­ors (two big and bulky, the third does­n’t work), two PC boxes (one works: a friend was upgrad­ing so I offered to get rid of the old one, the oth­er does­n’t even turn on any more), two key­boards, a 9600 baud modem, an old router, and assor­ted asso­ci­ated cables, at Free Geek Van­couver, a lovely organ­isa­tion that cheer­fully takes com­puter hard­ware, work­ing or not, obsol­ete or not. They reuse what can be reused (installing Ubuntu + soft­ware and donat­ing to a good home), and recycle what can­’t be reused. 

Reusing or recyc­ling old com­puters does­n’t solve all the envir­on­ment­al prob­lems caused by the com­put­ing industry but it’s at least a start.