I love Costco, and not only because I might be one of the few people for whom it actually makes sense to buy cans of olives in eight-packs. A new reason has come to my attention, which is that you can now trade your old electronics in for Costco cash cards, and be eco-friendly, to boot!

The program is powered by Gazelle, and is pretty simple. You go online, you tell them what you have to recycle, they tell you how much they’ll pay for it, and then they send you a box to ship it in, free of charge. So what is this Gazelle, exactly? Read the rest of this entry >>

If you’re one of the cool kids with an iPhone, than this post is for you. Oh, also, if you’re one of the cool kids with an iPhone, in San Francisco. You also have to like recycling. So, for the two of you left, great news! Recycling in San Francisco just got way easier with the EcoFinder app, which helps you find recycling centers near to where you are, based on what you need to recycle! Awesome. And look! A handy video!

Read the rest of this entry >>

Back in November 2008, a group of five eco-loving middle schoolers from Monroe, Wash. (near my hometown!) entered the second annual Lexus Eco Challenge, a partnership between Lexus, Scholastic and Oceanographer Fabien Cousteau that offers a total of $1 million in award money to winning students, teachers and schools. The Monroe Middle School students created this website to educate people on pollution in Puget Sound and how they can take action.

Their first site was so great that they’ve now been selected for the Final Challenge, and created another stellar site on E-Waste, providing a ton of great links on how to recycle old electronics, both in Washington state and nationwide. Winners will be announced on Earth Day. takepart by checking out their site. Good luck!

I probably couldn’t count up the amount of times this website has tried to make the connection between going green and saving money. It’s probably in the billions, if not in the bazillions (rough estimates). What this means, of course, is to be well versed in this topic is to have a knowledge of the interplay of business and the environment. We told you a while back that the New York Times had started a blog about the places those two fields collide called Green Inc., which has been a pretty great source for some quick hits about the topic.

But it seems the Times wants to one-up itself, and just yesterday created an entirely new section of its website called “Energy & Environment,” and it’s housed under the Business section. You’ll notice that the Green Inc. section is displayed prominently, but there is plenty of other content on the site to keep you busy, as you learn about why knowing about how business and environmentalism intertwine. Read the rest of this entry >>

Adding an eco-friendly option to its line-up, T-Mobile has begun shipping an ultra-green cell phone made from recycled materials. The Motorola W233 Renew features a plastic casing made from recycled water bottles, and uses about 20 percent less than energy than your standard handset.  Plus, it comes with a pre-paid envelope to send your old clunker in for recycling. And it’ll only set you back $10 with a 2-year contract.

Despite its 9-hour battery life and 2GB of memory storage for music, the no-frills phone does not offer much in the way of additional tech features. The current model does not even have a camera or internet capability built in.

Although the phone may not be for everyone (save those who just use their cell phones for calls), this is a definite step in the right direction. And for 10 bucks, it’s never been easier to walk the walk while you talk the talk.

We’ve told you in the past a few excellent causes to which you can donate your old cell phone (or “mobile” or “handheld” if you’re weird and/or European), and once before, in passing, we reminded you to erase all your personal data before doing so. It’s that last point I’d like to pick up on (pick up on? on which I’d like to pick up? with which on picking up I’d like? how the hell do we not end that phrase with a preposition there?) today.

ANYway, I technically have a point to get to (dammit…there we have another one). CleanTechnica (via The Consumerist) wants to remind you that if you don’t completely erase your cell phone before you donate it, you may have a lot of personal information still on there.

In a sampling of two thousand recycled mobile phones, 99 percent were found to have sensitive data like banking information and confidential emails. The sampling was done by Regenersis.

You may not think you have anything important on your cell phone, but you may have forgotten that one text, or email, or note you wrote to yourself, that maybe shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. So, please, please, before you donate your cell phone, go to this site and learn how to erase the data on your phone. Read the rest of this entry >>

The other day Andy alerted us to growing trouble in the recycling market, but it seems some 2nd graders in West Virginia have taken recycling matters into their own hands.  What began as a class recycling project at Ruthlawn Elementary in South Charleston, W. Va., evolved into a town wide collection program, where other parents and other students were dropping off their recyclables and kids were finishing their milk, just so they could recycle the bottle.  And when the county announced a need to stop recycling because of rising costs, the students began a letter writing campaign to the local government asking them to keep the recycling programs.  It seems their pleas were heard, as the city found a way to continue paper recycling!  Let’s hope these young activists can help restore the full program and inspire other students worldwide to demand a cleaner future.

takepart and find where and what you can recycle near you.

Photo: pomme_rewny’s Flickr Photostream (Creative Commons)

You might think that this economic downturn (officially a recession, I suppose, at this point) recycling would go up, what with the reusing of things, but apparently the exact opposite is happening.  The New York Times reports that the recyclables market has completely tanked, leaving people unable to sell used cardboard, metals, newspaper, or plastic.

Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.

In the past, cities have been able to sell the recycling they picked up at a profit, thus actually turning recycling programs into revenue.  But now, that’s completely changed. Read the rest of this entry >>

Recently Jon shared with us the complications involved with recycling electronics in China, and some companies efforts to improve their recycling programs, and now a few e-waste public interest groups are taking matters into their own hands.  Despite one recent crack down, the EPA seems to be having a difficult time tracking down shipments of hazardous electronic waste, and lack any sufficient protocol to ensure safe disposal.  According to Scientific American:

Worried about a “tsunami” of e-waste when new TV standards take effect on February 17, e-waste public interest groups the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the Electronics Take Back Coalition have launched a new program that will independently audit and certify electronics recyclers. The groups will Read the rest of this entry >>

Well, we missed another “holiday,” this time being America Recycles Day.  It was Saturday.  Now, treehugger thinks this is a (explitive deleted) holiday, and we should make November 15 Zero Waste Day.  Part of the reasoning is that America Recycles Day is brought to you by the fine people that make things that are put in recyclable despensers: Coke, Bud, Coors, the bottled water industry, and so forth.  It seems also that they’re not too happy with the fact that recycling is a transfer of responsibility from corporations to taxpayers. But what they fail to realize are these very impressive and completely false facts about recycling:

–Every time you say “I don’t believe in recycling,” a fairy dies.

–Did you know that the energy saved from recycling just one can is enough to power the sun for fifty years?

–Recycling comes from the Latin, “recyclicaie,” which means “to be way sexy.” Read the rest of this entry >>