This week I got down to sorting through computers and computer parts that were literally collecting dust in the office. There must have been 6 boxes of cables, motherboards, interface cards, obsolete hard drives and miscellaneous computer peripherals. As well there were a couple of old tube type monitors.
My friend told me about an e-waste amnesty week in the municipality this week. This is what got me focused on sorting through the computer equipment to reduce, reuse and recycle. I mentioned to my brother, John, that I was doing this. He said another brother, Ed, needed a computer for their firehall lounge. They were looking for a good computer for a reasonable price and free sounded really good. So I found a case, motherboard, hard drive and other parts to make a computer for the fire fighters. I’m more than happy to give this to the fire fighters because fire fighters are the true heroes in our society. They put their lives in danger every time they respond to any emergency call.
As I was going through the stuff, I found some hard drives a customer who upgraded their systems gave me and that my friend Bob could use in his computers. As well, I tested out 4 other computers and found 3 that were older models but basically operational. So Bob offered to take these 3 off my hands. He’ll install Linux on them, add old monitors from his office and he promised to find a good home for them. He also took a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch which he can use and that I no longer use. The fourth computer would not start up and after several attempts at trying various fixes, I gave up. This one will head to my friend’s for the e-waste amnesty week.
I also found obsolete network switches, broken speakers, my first cell phone, a broken modem, old hard drives that don’t work, an old calculator, an obsolete printer switch, a broken hand scanner and other miscellaneous parts that could be rendered for their scrap value. There are precious metals in some of these parts as well as toxic materials. One of the monitors will go to the e-waste site while the other will be used for the fire fighter’s computer.
So when Bob came over to pick up the 3 computers, we went out for dinner. My beautiful wife went with us and at the end of the meal, she paid for dinner. So for Bob’s effort to drive over, he not only got some free computers and peripherals, but he got a free dinner. She was more than happy to see the equipment go. We also helped to keep these items out of the landfill and worked towards a cleaner and better environment.