On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:38:15 -0000, Daniel James
wrote:

In article , Chris Whelan wrote:
What's to recycle?

Quite a lot of glass, for one thing.

A former colleague told me of an interesting experience he'd had in a
former life (job) getting rid of a decommissioned mainframe. He had all
sorts of quotes from people wanting to charge him for disposing of the
kit, and a local scrap dealer offering to /pay/ him for it. It turned
out that mainframes of that age had enough gold in their contacts for
it to be worth recovering it (by dissolving it in cyanide, I gather --
don't stand downwind!). The cabinets would have been good for scrap
metal, the rest was probably landfill.

There's a garden near here which has an imitation Stonehenge made of
mainframe cases

True about the gold, and the monitors going overseas for "recycling"

When a private school near where I used to live replaced its computers
they piled the old ones up in the garden and had a bonfire. You could
smell it for miles.

Do NOT try this at home