Digital Cameras are Dry Clean Only (& five other tips to recycle them)
April 3, 2009 at 12:52 pm | Filed under: Electronic Recycling, Green Living, TechnoBlogMy sister has four young sons. The youngest is almost three years old and he likes to helpful like his older brothers. Earlier this week he ran up to my brother-in-law holding the family’s digital camera, “Look, Da-da, I washed it!” Drip, drip, drip. If an overnight rice-bath doesn’t bring it back to life then it may be time to recycle it. Hopefully you never have a digital camera that meets the same fate but nowadays with cameras getting more sophisticated many of us may have an older model sitting in a drawer collecting dust. Here are five tips to consider when recycling your old digital camera.
5. How does the old cliche go? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Just because a digital camera no longer measures up to your standards does not mean some one might not get some use out of it. Small children seem to take naturally to digital cameras. A local school or non-profit might also be good avenues for re-use. Of course, whoever you give your old camera to it is important that they realize the importance to recycle it when they are done.
4. Keep it all together. Digital cameras, especially older ones, are usually very specialized and may have non-standard batteries, cables, memory cards, and software. If possible keep all these components together, not only will they make re-use more likely (sometimes replacement parts can be found but not always), but then you will not have stange cables and batteries lying around that are more likely to be thrown away instead of properly recycled or re-used.
3. Try a wilder re-use project. There internet is brimming with fun DIY (do-it-yourself) projects for digital cameras from multi-touch interfaces (as seen on the iPhone or Microsoft’s Surface), a spectroscope, pin-hole camera, or an infra-red camera. Probably not the best approach for the faint of heart but can be a great, geeky weekend adventure.
2. Star in your own reality TV show. This is related to the last idea but you can rig your digital camera up to do time-lapse photography and see where all those hours really go in the day!
1. Destroy your memory card. While this may seem a bit paranoid, and you never take embarrassing photos of yourself or others (right?), it is important to make sure your personal information is completely cleared off of a camera, or accompanying memory card, before you give it away–for re-use or recycling. Now that new models are coming out with facial recognition and GPS the potential hazard will become more apparent but even now, the best way to be safe is to erase and since completely erasing information off of a memory card can be difficult, keeping or destroying the card maybe your best option. If you give or ship your camera to a recycling company they should take care of this for you but it is always a good idea to ask.
One Response to “Digital Cameras are Dry Clean Only (& five other tips to recycle them)”
In the UK a lot of the mobile phone recycling companies will now also take items such as digital cameras and games consoles etc. so you can potentially get some cash for your old cameras through one of these companies.