Going green — recycling your electronics for money

Gazelle Logo
Last week, my Android obsession led me to buy Google’s Nexus One, which meant that I had a G1 lying around. I didn’t really want to go through the process of selling it myself, and I delayed any action until I became sure that my Nexus One wasn’t having the 3G connectivity problems with T-Mobile.

Alas, no issues in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area, so I’m ready to part ways with my old Android friend.

I found an interesting and exciting place on the “series of tubes” called Gazelle. They’re a Boston-based consumer electronics recycling and reselling company.

If you want to get started now, head straight over to Gazelle!

The catalog of technology they will recycle and for which they will pay you is extremely extensive, and the process for doing so is very streamlined.

  1. Find the item(s) you want to recycle/sell.
  2. Self-evaluate its/their condition and functionality.
  3. Gazelle gives you a real-time estimate of what they’ll pay you for it/them (and also the predicted value for it/them in the next few months).
  4. Optionally, Gazelle will send you a box for the item(s) if it qualifies.
  5. Otherwise, they will email you a shipping label to print, which you bring, with the boxed item(s), to the nearest UPS.
  6. They receive your item(s), evaluate it themselves, update you on any price change, and if you accept…
  7. You receive your payment via check, PayPal, prepaid Visa card, or a few other options.

Of course, you also feel good for not throwing out your old stuff! :)

Gazelle’s got a Twitter account.

If you click the link below and recycle your electronics, I’ll get a $10 referral, and you can in turn refer your friends and colleagues! Enjoy!

Get Cash For Your Gadgets at gazelle.com!

Comfort in catharsis?

Avatar theatrical release poster
After having seen a truly scintillating and visually orgasmic (so much so, in fact, that I developed a headache) IMAX 3D presentation of James Cameron’s Avatar, I began to put together a pattern emerging, to me anyway, in works of popular art and literature. Avatar and another contributor to this pattern, Disney-Pixar’s Wall·E, are generally straightforward in packing their punch.

Humans are evil — regardless of their intentions, malign or not — and more than likely will end up destroying or depleting themselves and their resources.
Wall·E theatrical release poster
I’m not really trying at verbose criticism, but why do we indulge in constructing massive, ever-more-awesome narratives to apologize for ourselves, our wars, our destruction, our sad state of existence? These and other stories are chillingly beautiful and evoke strong emotions, so I understand the appeal. The apologetics are just stupefyingly idiotic — that we might redeem our blight on the Earth through artistic acknowledgment. Let’s at least do something about our innumerable crises in addition to nostalgically memorializing them, please? Kthxbai.