How Do You Dispose Of Diskettes?
- Repurpose Them. You may dispose of your obsolete floppy disks by bringing them to the recycling center closest to you.
- Donate The Items. You may also gift the CDs to charitable organizations and friends.
- Market Them. Selling your floppy disks is another option for getting rid of them.
- Torch Them.
Exists a market for obsolete floppy disks?
Remember the days of floppy disks? It is profitable to recycle them. After discussing obsolete hard drives, it seems appropriate to discuss floppy disks and CD/DVD-ROMs. We may or may not have equipment capable of reading them. Such is referred to as “progress” in the computer industry.
The most interesting thing I learned while researching this topic is that old floppy discs have value, if purchased in sufficient quantities. Some large organizations, including the United States government, continue to store data on floppy disks. In a secure environment, they can store their data for an extended period of time without fear of Internet hacking.
There is at least one company in Lake Forest, California called Floppydisk.com that buys and sells floppy disks. They will accept any quantity and size of disks for recycling, but you must have at least 100 in order to be compensated. If you have 200 or more, they will also cover the shipping costs.
This could be a great program for a small-group fundraising event. Collect the members’ obsolete diskettes and send the entire collection to Floppydisk.com. They will accept up to 100,000 per transaction! Floppydisk.com passes the received disks through a degausser, which completely erases them. They reformat the documents and sell them for reuse.
If the disks cannot be reformatted, they are sold for promotional purposes or creative projects. Because they include so many different elements, recycling the components is complex and expensive, and magnetic media itself is not recyclable. They are considered electronic garbage and must be handled by a specialist in the field.
Floppydisk.com will retrieve data from obsolete floppy disks or Zip disks for a charge, and will take Zip disks for recycling. CDs and DVDs are more challenging. They are not accepted by floppydisk.com and cannot be placed in the blue bins for curbside collection. Along with vinyl records, they are still featured on the Goodwill website, although it is unclear how they will really handle these things.
They might also be used for creative projects at home or in school, or by locations such as the Share Center or a local group for persons with disabilities. To delete data from a CD, just scratch off the painted side (where the data really resides) until bare plastic is exposed.
On my bench grinder, I use a wire wheel, but any way will suffice. You may even make them illegible by punching holes in them or physically shattering them. Notify people that drilling, scratching, or breaking CDs, DVDs, or records will render them useless. If you do so, they will become garbage. Nobody, as far as I am aware, recycles VHS or data cassettes.
Electronic waste. The Recycle Bin is a weekly piece in Brunswick that discusses what to recycle, what not to recycle, and why. The general public is urged to email inquiries to. Harry Hopcroft serves on the Recycling and Sustainability Committee of Brunswick.
Where can I recycle my UK-based floppy disks?
Photographic Credit: sundesigns If you have been using computers for more than a few years, you may have a collection of obsolete floppy disks. You do not want them to end up in a landfill, so are they recyclable? Generally, individuals are advised to contact their local council for recycling them, however the majority of municipalities do not even put them on their list of recyclable items.