I'm using myself as a case study. I'm about to replace my printer and decided to put my money where my Margins are and see how easy/hard it is to find a way to environmentally dispose of it. If the printer was even close to working, I'd donate it to a charity or school, but the thing is dead dead dead. It's an NEC 870 monochrome laser printer which has been fantastic for me. I've had it for at least 6 or 7 years, and it finally conked out about 3 months ago.
It's easy to find places to dispose of ink cartridges and cell phones in an environmentally responsible way; entire printers (especially outdated ones) are another matter. My first google attempt: "environmentally dispose of printer" led me to the eCycling page of the EPA, which turns out to have a very useful page listing local, manufacturer and retail recycling programs.
Since my printer's a NEC machine, I figured I'd check out their Total Trade program first. When I put in my printer model, it turns out to not have any after market value. Not a surprise. They CAN recycle it for me, but I'll have to pay them a fee to do so. Here's the damage:
It's not a ton o'money, but if I can find a cheaper (aka free) way to recycle the printer, that would be ideal. I'll keep you posted on progress.
For reference:
EPA page: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm
