If you don't want to keep a recyclable PC, and you would prefer to donate it rather than sell it, you can make the donation to a family member, friend, colleague, next-door neighbor, or a charitable organization (select from these different donee types in whatever order of preference works for you).
For some insight into the recycle/donation market, here is a
summary of comments from Ken Goldstein, Ph.D., Founder and State
Coordinator, Hawaii Computers for Kids Program ("CFK").
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee1
Ken started CFK in 1992 as a grass roots organization, and he now uses the services of thousands of local volunteers. In 1996 CFK became a "signature project" of the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu; through the Rotary network, Ken can reach 1.2 million Rotary members around the world.
When an end-user donates a computer, he or she gets a formal donation receipt that is qualified for federal and state tax write-offs. For PCs less than two years old--if the donor is a corporation--a federal law allows the entire original cost of the machine as a write-off (the corporation gets the free use of that machine for two years, and still gets a full tax write-off).
The donation process works like this: donated PCs are rounded up by Helping Hands Hawaii (HHH), and are then distributed to one or more of 16 local high schools. Students at these schools have been trained to diagnose, repair/upgrade, and load new operating systems on these donated machines. Then CFK locates schools that need these ready-to-use computers. This has proven to be Ken's most daunting task, as the Hawaii Dept. of Education does not currently have a system for easily finding needy end-users. Nonetheless, CFK has managed to move more than 10,000 computers from donors to schools to date.
The entire transcript of his comments are on my supplemental
page.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee2
"Share the Technology," a nonprofit corporation, offers caveats
for folks preparing to donate a PC. This is a MUST READ if you're
considering donating a PC.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee3
TechSoup.org maintains a "Recycled and Refurbished Hardware" page
that lists online (and traditional) national and local hardware
manufacturers and resellers that provide used hardware to non-
profit organizations.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee4
AnotheR BytE, Inc. (nonprofit) maintains a Non-Profit Computer
Recycling Useful Links page. It's extensive and you'll find it to
be very helpful; check it out:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee5
My next article in this series will cover scrapping PCs.
Note: for those of you interested in recycling your PC media as I
reported in Part 1 of this series, I recently received
GreenDisk's Certificate of Destruction for the CDs, floppies, and
tapes I shipped them on October 3rd (they certified the
destruction on October 10th). David Beschen, President, GreenDisk
Services, wrote me to explain that "unless it is a corporate
contracted client we generally process these [end-user media
recycling] packages as fill work." Sounds good to me. I once
again strongly recommend that you consider GreenDisk's end-user
media recycling process for any old media you have on hand.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/422/tr.cgi?lee6
You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com
