How to Get Rid of Old Electronics

The way in which electronics operate and their inner workings can be very exciting and rather eye-opening at times. How knew exactly how Wi-Fi worked, or how a bladeless fan keeps us cool in the summer? The Inner Workings section has traditionally been about how thing work and what makes them tick, but for this month’s edition we’ll be doing things a bit differently.

Kind of sticking to the “how stuff works” theme, ever wondered how do you get rid of electronic junk?

How many of us have broken pieces of electronics lying around the house but we have no idea what to do with them or how to dispose of the correctly? So this month’s feature will focus on the Inner Workings of electronic disposal.

One thing that will never get old or go out of fashion is good rock and roll, but we have been playing Guitar Hero for a number of years - there has to be an old guitar peripheral out there that does work too well anymore. Well, what do you do when the green button thinks it’s a blue and the red pretends to be a yellow?

For starters, the students at John Hopkins University have taken it upon themselves to repurpose old Guitar Hero controllers to help train bionic arms. A user could either ship their old controllers to the good folks at John Hopkins University, or they could use the plastic body to repurpose it into a real, functioning guitar instrument.

There are a number of websites that will show users exactly what they need and how to program it, which should breathe some new life into old Betsy.

The other alternative is to sell the broken guitar on an online shopping portal such as eBay for scrap parts. There are quite a few people who require just one or two extra parts to modify their sweet axe into something different, and selling them the broken unit will work out cheaper for everyone.

Another, and somewhat older technology that has fallen by the wayside, is the old floppy disk. There is absolutely no computer on earth that still requires a floppy drive to operate, so those black disk are pretty much useless. Or are they?

A company called Greendisk specialises in the recycling of floppy disks and just about any other technological gadgets that reached the end of their lifespan. They will gladly take the installation files of Indiana Jones and the Quest for Atlantis off anyone, and help make the earth a greener place in the process.

For the serious old-school geek, there are a set of instructions on the website Instructables on how to turn the 5” stiffy into a rather useful bag. In another post they show users who to line the bag with canvas to make it even more user-friendly - and keep all your shopping inside.

There are also several more posts on what can be built from floppy parts, such as earrings, rings and necklaces. Speaking of necklaces, there is a pretty sweet how-to on making a necklace from an old keyboard’s keys as well as another 101 uses for a dead keyboard.

Disposing of electronics and music albums can be a lot more exciting than just throwing them away in the bin. There are environmentally-friendly ways to dispose of them, while others will bring the user a bit of extra cash. Whichever way a user chooses, just think about the possibilities before chucking it in the bin - and find a new and exciting way to repurpose of dispose of the much loved electronics. Or they could be dropped from 5 stories up to see how much punishment they can take...