Tuesday, July 5, 2011

How About Recycling Old Computers?

By Owen Jones


Numerous progressive towns and cities are either already recycling or are thinking about recycling old computers. Numerous municipalities already do this with television sets, but not so many do it with computers.

There are quite a few reusable parts in a computer when you think of it, but most owners just throw their old computers away when they stop working or become 'too slow'.

Then they go out and buy a new one which has precisely the same DVD player as they just put in the bin. That goes for the internet card, the hard drive and the modem and other bits and items as well, I am sure. There might even be toxic substances in the chips that could pollute the soil at the landfill site.

It will almost certainly be standard practice in the not too distant future to recycle computers and other items of electronic equipment. In fact there are already some places that gratefully accept 'old' computers, although there are not a lot that recycle the parts out of broken ones.

Some churches and most charity shops will take working computers to redistribute (or sell) to children, whose parents cannot afford to buy them or to be sent to Third World countries, where there is a dire need for computer hardware so that children are not left behind in the technological advances being made in communication and workplace apparatus.

However, there do not seem to be enough people cannibalizing old computers to make ones that work. After all, any computer is better than no computer at all and it does not take an advanced machine to go on the Internet, especially if you do not insist on running Windows 7. Older versions of Windows are more that capable or running Net software. We used them for years, didn't we?

Monitors and printers are also reusable or even recyclable, although these items are not normally thrown out as frequently as computers. Monitors can be taken care of in the same fashion as televisions, anyway it is always handy to have a spare monitor.

Ink cartridges should be refilled rather than replaced. All you need is a bottle of the correct sort of ink. Indian ink will do for the black cartridge which is the one most people replace the most often.

Take a syringe with a needle, suck up a few millilitres and squirt it through the hole in the side - NOT through the hole in the bottom, or you will damage the cartridge. This hole is usually concealed with sticky tape or a label, but it is easy to find if you are searching for it. you can refill cartridges a dozen or more times, before they get clogged and that can save hundreds of dollars (here a black cartridge costs $10-15).

Colour cartridges are refillable in the same fashion and you ought to be able to get hold of the three inks necessary for colour printing at a printers. Colour cartridges are even more expensive to replace. Another advantage of refilling yourself is that you will not run out of ink part way through a print job.




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