I recently decided to downsize my CD collection since it had been sitting untouched under my desk in one of those old giant CD 'binders' for years - the contents of this wooden CD crate are all that remain. But I was left wondering what to do with all my unwanted CDs. It turns out that there are a number of options for recycling your old CD/DVDs. I used a favorite green site, www.earth911.com, and discovered that my local Best Buy has recycling bins at the front of the store for CDs, batteries and cell phones - who knew?! On another note, I also recently brought an old desk top computer that was simply collecting dust to the Geek Squad desk at Best Buy where they happily took it all (I removed the hard drive first) off my hands to recycle. They charged a $10 fee for the monitor, but gave me a $10 gift card in return. Back to the CDs, here are some other 'technotrash' recycling options I have recently seen recommended by other professional organizers.
I love GreenDisk's slogan: "because good planets are hard to find"
Here are some interesting CD/DVD tidbits from cdrecyclingforfree.com:
CD/DVD Recycling Facts
- A cd/dvd is considered a class 7 recyclable plastic
- To manufacture a pound of plastic (30 CDs per pound), it requires 300 cubic feet of natural gas, 2 cups of crude oil and 24 gallons of water
- It is estimated that AOL alone has distributed more than 2 billion CDs. That is the natural gas equivalent of heating 200,000 homes for 1 year
- It is estimated that it will take over 1 million years for a CD to completely decompose in a landfill
Think about what technotrash you have cluttering your home and office, check out the resources above and do something about it! And by all means, let us know if you have other recycling resources to share.
1 comment:
Sarah they are also great for art projects for children. They can be painted and hung as mobiles or as a cool one of a kind art piece on a wall. A whole group of them in a design on a wall in a playroom is fantastic! I worry sometimes about recycling some of these things and what chemicals are released in that process. I try to reuse so much more as well as reduce. I also Freecycle things and pass them onto others before I recycle. I am so proud of my family for getting our trash output to almost zero. We recycle things we can not pass onto others or reuse and have little to none trash every week. Thanks for the tips on recycling though.
Amanda Berisford
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