Posted March 23, 2006
Thursday is usually tech day here at Best Bets Daily, which means that over the past year or so we’ve enthused about a lot of tech toys that, sooner or later (probably sooner), will end up in landfills. So: a moment of silence for the environment, a brief flicker of guilt, and then redemption. Or at least recycling. If you’ve got an old laptop, cell phone or other electronic device that uses rechargeable batteries sitting unused in a drawer or closet, go to call2recycle.org. In a few clicks (despite the name, you don’t have to call anyone), you’ll find potentially dozens of places (lots of Radio Shack stores, for instance) near your home that will accept your old rechargeable batteries and dead cell phones. The thing is, the nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion and lead batteries in lots of current devices are astonishingly toxic to the environment, so you really can’t just throw them out with your regular household trash. The site’s a new service of the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, a non-profit group. There. We told you. We feel (slightly) better already.
Free at call2recycle.org.