Ever since spending a half a dozen Saturdays in high school parking lots doing car-side computer recycling as the public information officer for the Fairfax County Recycling program, I have been a huge proponent of computer recycling. Although the new flat screen monitors are much better for the environment (those big monitors were truly evil), simply throwing away a computer is not only wasteful, it is really, very bad for the environment.

The trouble has been, that is isn’t easy to recycle a computer. You can’t just leave it at the curb and until recently you had to PAY to have it recycled. Now, thanks to a new partnership called reconnect between Dell and your local Goodwill — computer recycling has just become a lot easier. In Albuquerque (check to see if reconnect is in YOUR city), you can bring your computer to your local Goodwill and recycle it for free. Even better, any profit from recycling the computer is donated back to Goodwill — so you save money and help out a worthy cause at the same time.