September 27, 2011 6:30 AM

This was not a problem 30 years ago. Garbage went out on the bottom of your driveways once a week in a green garbage bag, and was picked up by the friendly neighbourhood garbage men. No fuss.

Of course now times have changed, and there are different coloured boxes and various types of bags your city/town requires you to use for every type of ‘waste’. Recycling, plastics, papers, organics, yard waste. Heaven forbid you want to dispose of paint cans or toxic material… the dump has a special place for that waste!

These alterations to our disposal methods are meant to improve our environmental footprint, and encourage every citizen to ‘do their part’ for the greener good.

Remember the ‘litterbug’ campaign? It started to really pick up steam in about the mid-60’s, before then people would freely throw garbage out of their car windows… absolutely appalling to think about in recent years! But the changes worked, and the movement grew… the same thing happened with the ‘Recycle, Reduce, Reuse’ campaign.

So we’ve given ‘litterbugs’ the boot (or plenty of dirty looks!), and we’ve educated a new generation on the value of ‘recycle, reduce, reuse’… is e-waste disposal next?

How many computers have you owned in your lifetime? 3, 5, 10? What about all the hardware that has come and gone – printers, fax machines, routers, monitors, cameras, pagers etc. What did you do to dispose of these out of date items once you were finished with them?

It’s time to find out the new rules for getting rid of e-waste. Many cities will provide an ewaste disposal service for residential waste removal. Go to your city/town waste website to inquire about ewaste pickups or recycling drives. If you own a business and have large amounts of bulky equipment taking up space, there are services that will pick up or accept your e-waste and recycle it for you.

If you’re looking to get rid of all your hardware, virtualization is the equivalent to a green IT garbage man. A virtual solution will help to eliminate all unwanted hardware and save all associated maintenance costs. Atum goes one step further by offering an e-waste recycling program – send us your out of date hardware, and we’ll safely recycle it …you don’t need it anyways!

Don’t be an e-waste litterbug; e- recycle, e-reduce and e-reuse!

Originally posted on Atum & IT Industry News

Blogger Profile: Christine Sheppard
Christine Sheppard is the marketing and communications voice at Atum Corporation – a VPS hosting and IT Solutions Company. Atum is a Canadian leader in VPS solutions and virtualization and Christine draws upon her inherent interest in the advance of new computer technology to discuss topics in Cloud Computing, Virtualization and emerging business trends. www.twitter.com/AtumIT

Posted by Sue Ansell at September 27, 2011 6:30 AM

Categories: Green technology

Comments

Chris Greaves email - torontrepreneur.blogspot.com/

Good sentiments Christine, but I think you've got it back to front; it's "reduce, re-use, re-cycle".

Recycling ("Blue Box") is the worst thing to hit Toronto; it has educated people to believe that as long as you TOSS IT in a blue box, you're being a Good Citizen". Wrong!. Recycle is the WORST of three options. And "toss it" encourages littering.

"Recycling bad, Bad Blue box, BAD!" http://www.chrisgreaves.com/ClearThinking/2007/02/recycling-bad-bad-blue-box-bad/ There We Go, Again http://www.chrisgreaves.com/ClearThinking/2007/02/there-we-go-again/

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