Computer Recycling???

[Ready]

We have just upgraded to a new computer, there is not much wrong with the old one, other than its age, it would certainly be useful to someone. Does anyone know of a company that takes computers and recycles them for charity. I don't want to just landfill it (in fact I'm not even sure that is legal anyway). Any suggestions?

Greater Manchester area.

I think they are sometimes sent to 3rd world countries. Or used by charities in this country. We have a recycling directory here but I can't find it!

There's no real rush... I just really don't want to dump it. terrible waste.

Put it on Freecycle and say you want it recycled or giving to charity

I did this last week and got squillions of helpful people offering to take it off my hands

Damn, I just wrote a looong reply and deleted it by mistake

envocare have links for recycling computers but I don't know if they're up to date.

the laundry recycles lots - latest computer collection finished today, dammit, but I'm guessing there'll be another soon.

Do try freecycle though, as mp suggests, ours seems to turn over lots of computing stuff.

ITforcharities looks promising.

Thanks very much, I have emailed freecycle for some more information... but that IT for charities had a link to a company based in Rawtenstall, which is not too far from us.

Thanks again ladies.

don't forget to completely remove your hard drive. There's been cases where peoples personal info has been nicked because of important data being used for other purposes.

what do you mean completely remove hard drive?? we have reformatted the hard drive. is that not enough?? I'm worried now.

no it's not enough - if someone wants to access your info they can.

Now - trouble is I'm not a computer take a parter expert so don't have a lot of idea of how you do this, though I will ask dh for you but he is currently snoring!

oh... there was me thinking that if we reformatted it and took it to a reputable charity they would clean in up. I don't know if there was anything that personal on there, but I am guessing even letters with our name and address could be used?? Thanks for the warning.

There is a good selection of disk wipers here

I wold encourage you to donate, it's possible that the overall good done by a 2nd hand PC is greater than by a new one.