My daughter works for Whole Foods. As a college aged person, she has enthusiastically embraced the save the world ethos many young people have. We’re now using reusable shopping bags and recycling our plastic, glass and metal.
Technology moves fast. I have been recommending people look at computer purchases like office supplies instead of capital expenditures required by the IRS for 20 years. If you look at your computer as a capital asset you tend to live with outdated technology too long. Given the cost of powerful systems, both desktop and portable, it is easy to justify replacing your system every year or two based solely on productivity improvements.
That leaves you with a dilemma. What do you do with the outdated equipment?
The obvious first solution is trickle down. Use your old system to upgrade another employee. Use that employee’s system to upgrade another employee, etc.
If it is still working, donate it to a school or non-profit. Just because you’ve moved on to an upgraded system doesn’t mean it isn’t more than powerful enough to support word processing and/or Internet surfing. Or give it to an employee to take home. We did that a lot in my old company. I figured that time spent on a home computer increased the employee’s working knowledge of computers and made them more productive at work.
If you do give your old system to someone else, remember to securely erase the hard drive first. You don’t want sensitive information leaking out. Don’t just delete the files, do a full DOD erase with a program like Eraser (http://heidi.ie/eraser/).
If your electronic “junk” isn’t working, or is so old that it can’t be donated, don’t just throw it away. Most electronics contains toxic materials and valuable metals that need to be reclaimed. Two resources for recycling electronics are:
http://www.myboneyard.com
http://www.gcycle.org
Remember, don’t just dispose of electronics--find a way to recycle them instead. Planet Earth will thank you.