https://www.pcmag.com/news/avoid-the-trash-heap-15-great-uses-for-an-old-pc
In 2019, after seven years of slumps, PC sales went up by the tiniest increment—0.3 percent. Demand then surged in recent weeks as people shifted to work-from-home setups due to COVID-19 quarantines. Which means some of you may be getting a new computer. But what do you do with the old PC?
You may be tempted to go the easy route and just junk it. But don't. If that laptop or desktop was created any time in the last decade, you'd be surprised by how much life you (or others) can get out of it. I'm not talking about limping along, but of ways to bring an old PC back to useful life.
[This editor can vouch for plenty of life in old boxes. For the past 4 years, a now-nearly-decade-year-old Core 2 Duo Laptop with 6 GB RAM has been my primary computer.--martyb]
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Friday May 01 2020, @05:10AM
Here in the middle of euro-land we do recycle e-waste [recupel.be]. You have to pay a so called Recupel tax on electronic goods. This tax is used to process your electronic waste. You can bring it to a container park and deposit it free of charge (that is, you already paid for it through the Recupel tax).
We also have world renowned companies that mine for example gold and other materials from that e-waste [umicore.com].
Most of the people in euro-land consider dumping such e-waste after flowing thru ten shell companies barbaric and prehistoric. Or at least a sign of utter incompetence at the political leadership level plus a complete lack of willingness in the population to punish politicians for not doing anything about it.
Also, it's not a bad thing that electricity is expensive in euro-land. This makes people consume less of it and produce more of it (with for example solar panels).