[NTLUG:Discuss] Computer Parts Disposal/Recycling
Preston Hagar
prestonh at gmail.com
Thu Jul 2 15:54:49 CDT 2009
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 2:55 PM, John K. Taber<jktaber at charter.net> wrote:
> My town has an annual "crud mobile" day when residents can dispose of
> paint, thinners, and yes, electonics.
>
> The electronics isn't perfect, the crud mobile requires a fee for TVs
> because of the tubes, and the fee is too high. You have to be dedicated
> to ecology to pay that much. But still...
>
> Call your town and ask about crud day.
Thanks so far for everyone's responses. In answer to some of them, I
am in Tarrant county, specifically Grapevine for the business,
although I live in Fort Worth. As far as the city of Grapevine goes,
I have talked to them by phone and they pointed me to their website
which has a pdf that tells about Dell's recycling program (if you buy
a computer from them), Apple recycling phones and mp3 players, and
then lists a few local businesses that "will recycle e-waste" I tried
calling a few, but not all of them. Of the 2 or 3 I called, they had
no idea that they were "e-waste recyclers" or that they were on that
list. I did get one to say that they "might take it" which I took to
mean that I could load up all the stuff I have, bring it by and they
would cherry pick what they wanted, leaving me with the rest. That
might be an option, but I really don't want to carry everything around
in my car, or have to load and unload it more than once.
For Fort Worth (where I live), they let you take 2 computers (I don't
know if they would count a server as a computer, but probably) a month
to one of their 3 inconveniently located locations (although this may
be what I end up doing). Also, they explicitly state several times
that they will not take anything from a business, but I guess I could
pass the stuff off as my own and whittle it a way over the course of
several months.
As for the Google results, that is what I did when I was talking about
the e-waste recyclers that charge a lot of money(if they actually
picked stuff up) and then never show up when you call them. I have
tried 3 different ones, one finally showed up after about 5 phone
calls and 4 missed dates. I may have to try another one, but I was
hoping maybe someone had used one before that they could recommend.
As for what I have, off the top of my head, is a Dell PowerEdge 2650
2U server with U320 drives. The motherboard is flaky (tricks you into
thinking it is working and then crashes on you with a weird Dell error
that tells you to replace the MB) and I honestly don't have the time
or energy to try to replace it (it is out of warranty). The RAM is
also possibly bad and one of the fans is dead. I have 4 older "cal
PC" 2U server chassis that are built like tanks and are a pain to work
on (impossible to use without cutting yourself at least once). 1 has
a dead motherboard in it (the Northbridge chip burned up) with a
Athlon X2 processor that I think is still good. They all have older
cd drives and floppy drives in them. One is empty (except for the
drives) and two have older (Athlon 64 and P4 generation equipment I
think) "desktop grade" motherboards that I was considering taking out
for workstations, but would leave in if it would help me get rid of
the cases. I also have an old Dell WebApp 120 1U server with dead
SCSI drives in it. I am not sure exactly the specs on it, but I do
know it is about 4-5 years old. I think that is it, but there may be
more.
Anyway, thanks for the responses so far. Let me know if anyone has
any other ideas or wants to pick up any of this stuff in Grapevine or
somewhere close to there. If I find a good solution, I will post back
to let everyone know.
Preston
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