Recycling CDs, DVDs and Games for cash

There are ever increasing numbers of opportunities for recycling your unwanted bits and pieces, your slightly outdated gadgets, or those CDs and DVDs that you have grown bored of. Some sites offer you the chance to get some cash back on these items which surely makes recycling worthwhile. If you can't be bothered with the time and effort of listing your items on an auction site then perhaps you should consider websites that will do most of the hard work for you?

Recycling CDs, DVDs, Computer Games

Ecoants has recently listed a new website which will buy your unwanted music, films and computer games. As long as the media item is an original itself and contains the original artwork the site will pay you cash for sending it to them. You can find out more about earning cash for unwanted CDs and DVDs at Ecoants.

Don't throw it away!

Remember, before you throw anything away, take a moment to think about what you might be able to do with it. You could recycle that mobile phone and earn some money for doing so (see blog below); you could also recycle your unwanted gadgets - list them on an auction site or even give them away! Most of the items we throw away without giving a second thought, could be used by someone else who would be grateful to receive such an item!

And as for paper, cardboard, aluminium cans, tin cans, glass bottles...it takes just a tiny bit of effort to recycle these things, doing so lessens landfill waste (or potentially unpleasant incineration of waste) and saves lots and lots of valuable natural resources. It makes sense to recycle. It's easy too.

thanks for reading...

Recycling takes up too much time and effort!

OK, it is possibly easier not to recycle and throw all your rubbish into one bag than to separate it out into four differently coloured ones.

Yes, having to wash out and dry those plastic bottles and tin cans is not particularly convenient when there are possibly a hundred and one better things you could be doing with those valuable seconds of your time.

Maybe too you don't produce much household rubbish compared to that wasteful neighbour of yours who always seems to produce enough for the whole street on his own, so why bother doing your little bit when he clearly isn't doing his?

You know, there are so many tiny excuses we could all use to avoid the hassle of recycling all of those things that could be recycled if we thought about it for a few minutes, but the reasons for recycling are so compelling, and it is something that every one of us can do to make a massive overall contribution to reducing household wast, that these pale into insignificance to the consequences of not recycling.

The benefits go far and beyond reducing the amount of waste that is dumped in landfill sites or in the sea. We are in the 21st century now and are supposedly a more enlightened race, so lets prove it. We need to clean up our act, literally, and it is not difficult for each one of us to do. Let me just highlight, again, the immense benfits you will be contributing too just by taking a few moments of your day to recycle as much of your rubbish as you can rather than just throwing it away.

• You will help to reduce landfill volumes and not leave a dirty legacy for future generations (our children and their children) to have to clean up.
• Reduced landfill means reduced methane emissions from it. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (that could exacerbate global warming) and we don't that at the moment as we have enough problems with carbon dioxide.
• By recycling materials you will be helping to save valuable, finite, natural resources, such as aluminium. Finite means they will run out. If they are buried in landfill, it will not be an easy nor pleasant process to extract them from that.
• By recycling plastic you are ensuring that we don't have an Earth contaminated with a material that endures for lengthy periods of time and biodegrades at a painfully slow rate, if at all.
• Recycling will save energy as less new material will have to be made/extracted from the Earth. Saving energy will conserve the valuable natural resources used to produce it. Plus this will have the positive knock-on effect of reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

So you see, those tiny excuses at the beginning of this blog really mean nothing compared to what wont happen if we don't recycle. Recycling may be a bit inconvenient sometimes, but it is such a simple and easy thing to do, that takes very little time, and the benefits of doing so are really incredible when you look at them a little more closely.

Feel good about recycling and convince that neighbour of yours to do it too!

Recycling your unwanted mobile/cell phones

Recycle those mobile phones!

Each year millions of mobile phones are thrown away or put away in cupboards, boxes and other hiding places as people replace them with newer and more exciting models. These phones can be recycled very easily so what is stopping us?! It is totally wrong to throw them away as they are made up of valuable materials which can be reused which saves both natural resources on Earth and energy at the same time! These mobile phones also contain chemicals which can eventually pollute the ground (and potentially groundwater) they are thrown into and this can cause both serious environmental and human health problems. So doesn't it just make sense to recycle instead?
Three simple suggestions follow where you can recycle your mobile phones:

• If you live in the UK, Ireland or Holand you can find out more about how to recycle your mobile phone for cash here. In the USA you can recycle your cell phone with green phone. It is so easy to do and overall takes just a few minutes of your time. I have done it and to me it makes perfect sense. I receive money for doing something which is good for the planet! Fantastic! Why leave your unused mobile phone in a box somewhere, or worse just throw it away, when you can receive some money back when you recycle it?
• If you have a particularly valuable mobile phone, or perhaps one of the newer generation smart phones, you might want to consider selling it yourself on ebay. It requires a little more effort than the option above but at least you know that you are doing something that benefits not only you but also the world.
• If you are a particularly charitable person then you may wish to consider donating your unwanted mobile phone to charity to help them raise money for their aims. In the UK you could try Actionaid recycling and in the USA you might consider charitable recycling.

The Essential Guide to Recycling

This recycling guide aims to inform you what you can recycle, how you can recycle it and why you should try to recycle it. We are presently struggling a little to drag ourselves away from being a throwaway society so the advice here is aimed at helping us all to be a little less wasteful. Ideally we should all try and recycle as much as we can, but this may not always be feasible, however, this recycling guide will hopefully show some of the easiest recycling methods.

Why is it important to recycle?

There are many reasons.

1. It will reduce waste. Everything we throw away has to be put somewhere. These days we buy, use and throw away so many popular electronic consumer goods that our waste dumps are being filled up at unsustainable rates. We cannot keep dumping our rubbish in waste tips (and nobody really wants a new waste tip near to their home either). We have to look at alternatives. Recycling as much as we can will improve our environments because it will reduce the load on the waste dumps and reduce the pollution caused by these dumps.
2. Recycling those things we no longer want will also help us to manage our natural resources better. All those electronic consumer goods for example require the use of valuable materials to make them. Many of these materials are recoverable if we recycle those items rather than throw them away. There are many ways we can recycle such things and this blog will detail some of the easiest ways.
3. It is arguable that it is morally right to recycle rather than throw away if such an option is possible. If we live in a privileged society we can sometimes unwittingly take for granted things that other societies can only dream of having access to. If we were to recycle these things once we move on to newer models, they could be reused in such societies.
4. Many products require the use of vast amounts of energy to make them. This energy is often supplied by fossil fuels, which as you probably know are deemed to be responsible for global warming and subsequent climate change. By recycling we can often significantly reduce the amount of energy used in making products from scratch and therefore help reduce those damaging carbon dioxide emissions which cause global warming.
5. In relation to points 1 and 4. Rubbish dumps emit harmful methane once the waste starts to decompose. Methane is also said to be a powerful gas that can cause global warming. Thus by recycling we can reduce not only the greenhouse gases from the beginning of the process (when the item is made) but also at then end of the process (when the item is thrown away).

Just a few of the main reasons to recycle what we can.

The rest of this blog is going to be devoted to giving you ideas about what you can recycle, how to recycle and sometimes further reasons for doing so. I hope it is useful to you.