You hoarder!!!

Actually you're doing it all wrong - over here we dump our useless gizmos on a business. They break it apart and sort it into three categories:

1) Broken and circa 1960 - melted for scrap gold. Plastics generally become car parking bollards in supermarkets (along with tyres that didn't make it to tarmac).

2) Stuff that can make working computers - ends up either as computers of Schools in Africa or cheap computers for various bits of UK society (including learning centres).

3) Bulk buy - ever wanted 20 CD-ROM drives for 10-20$ all certified working and repaired? How about a $1 calibrated floppy drive? This is the place.

Business is self funding through what it sells on.

Not saying my world is perfect, but I do have to thank the European Union for forcing such beauties on us.

Personally I'm happy to pay for recycling rather than put it in the ground (but I can also see when someone's been stiffed). What I'd also like however is manufacturers to think about the crap they're packing in such that less is recycled.

I'm sick and tired of getting something from the supermarket that's a box in a box in a box triple wrapped in plastic. Blister packs are the most evil of them all (and designed to reduce the number of returned goods 'cos the pack is damaged by opening).

Sorry - rant over - appreciate the pain you've just endured; we'd that a stitch up over here.

Honestly, most of this stuff isn't mine. My old apartment was rife with rich veins of non-functioning and obsolete technology, most of it accumulating over several years. I had disposed of three monitors and five computers before this run, and those were part of the free Office Depot promotion where they accepted

Blister packs are the Dept. of Homeland Security of medicine, what I like to call "security by activity". When some loon started poisoning Tylenol back in the 80's, big pharma had to look like it was doing something about it, and so they invented "tamper-proof packaging", which really does nothing but make it obvious that they don't know how to ship this crap.

All in all, the EU is looking better every day.

LOL - personally I think our roles in life are to take the piss out of our respective countries. Hell - we live in them, we know how insidious they can be.

As an added bonus it's like a two-for-one sale for me; the selective independence of the UK coupled with the gravy-boat of the EU.

The EU has always been described as a gravy-boat ... it's like a gravy-train but moves slower and collects more money. Pretty amazing that recycling has become a clawed success in retrospect.

Still, at least it isn't Canada (bickering Separatists and Federalists all in the name of 58% income tax, 68% on bonus' and 14.5% on sales - I think more people are in goverment than work there - well, that's what it seemed like me).

Around here they take the stuff for free and thank you for the privilege. There's a tech school in downtown Harrisburg where the kids learn about electronics by dissecting the cast-offs. No idea where the stuff goes from there.

I heard they feed it to cows, mulched up with alfalfa and moonjuice. They're growing cows that can think electronically, so they can run the next NASA missions. They won't be ready to do anything for the Hubble or the Space Station, but keep your eyes peeled for them in about seven years.

That's what I heard, anyhow.

In seven years, I've heard we're going to get hydrogen cars that emit nothing but water. But the cows sound better.

Oh, that reminds me, I have a few things that I need to recycle. I think they're both scanners, actually. My scanner broke a while ago and my sister gave me one that looks like it works but neither of us could find drivers for it so it's pretty much worthless. It's no where near 218 pounds worth of electronics though, might be 20 pounds at most.