From 9am to 2pm long lines of cars carrying equipment to recycle queued up on the long entry road leading into the complex. eWaste2011 was sponsored by Small Dog Electronics an Apple Specialist and National Life who donated the site. Small Dog employees greeted drivers dropping off their goods ushering them along to the collection site.
My wife and I wondered aloud as we drove through the line waiting to unload our materials at all of the expensive yet obsolete electronics like this pallet of TVs. We saw possibly six to eight tractor trailers waiting for loading and thought of all the money this equipment cost at time of original purchase. What was here was likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollar range but no longer of value to users.
Recently I've been reading a very interesting book What's Mine is Yours, the Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Roo Rogers and Rachel Botswan which takes this to task. You've seen my earlier post sharing Rachel's inspiring Ted Talk. What we're doing here at the eWaste freecycle event is shifting from a "me to we" world which is something we more typically environmentally inspired Vermonters often do anyway.
