Recycle or Reuse? Making It Easier To Be Green

I figured I could help spread the word about a technology recycling and reuse campaign focused around the upcoming Earth Day on April 22.

The effort, called 100 Percent Day, aims to collect up to 100,000 computers on that day that may have reached their end of life with their original owners but that could find a home with schools, social services organizations and other non-profit groups. The event is being sponsored by the Computer Reuse and Recycling Coalition (reached through Willie Cade below), but it has the backing of a slew of other companies and organizations including NEC Display, Computers For Schools, the Environmental Protection Agency, CompuMentor, Operation Homelink and CompTIA.

Willie Cade, CEO of Computers For Schools and the coordinator for the Computer Reuse and Recycling Coalition, figures about 100,000 computers are shut off each day never to be turned back on. And he hopes to remedy that. In his organization's guise as a Microsoft Authorized Reburbisher, it takes in these old systems, spruces them up as appropriate and then redeploys them where they're needed.

Cade will kick off the program with NEC Display and others with an event April 18 at the Bucktown campus of the Chicago International Charter School. But Cade says this is a nationwide effort, and he urges resellers and channel sorts interesting in participating to register their locations at the 100 Percent Day site.

NEC plans to donate a 30-inch monitor to the Bucktown school in its support of the effort, as well as to draw attention to its ongoing environmental work. That work includes NEC’s Total Trade program, through which you can earn credit toward buying a new NEC monitor by donating an old piece of technology. Christopher Newman, an environmental scientist and spokesman for the EPA, says 100 Percent Day is part of several activities happening during the EPA’s Pass It On week. The site link here gives you a rundown of events, how to get involved and also information about various policies, but here is another general resource.

“A lot of our programs are moving toward recycling and a recovery focus,” Newman says, rather than strict disposal.

The federal government itself also is getting into the act. Through a program that ended March 30, Newman says various agencies have donated hundreds of thousands of pounds of technology that will find a reuse. I wonder where all that stuff will wind up. Hopefully someplace where it’ll be turned back on again.