Seattle ‘Geeks’ give computers a second life
Apr 13, 2013, 1:06 PM | Updated: Apr 15, 2013, 9:29 am
Free Geek Seattle keeps and reuses what they can and then recycles the rest. (AP Photo/File)
(AP Photo/File)
How many of you have old computers sitting around your house and don’t know what to do with them? Some of you might be worried about personal information on the hard drives so you don’t recycle them. So they just sit, taking up space.
There’s now a small group of Seattle geeks who will take them off your hands and give them a second life.
Free Geek Seattle is little like a construction restoration company for computers. Instead of recycling wood and other home supplies when tearing an old house down, these guys strip down computers and reuse what can be salvaged to build new machines that they then donate.
Andrew Kane is one of about a dozen people with Free Geek Seattle who tears down the old computers. “I’ll open up the cover and look inside, and I can pretty much identify by looking about how old things are,” said Kane.
They keep and reuse what they can and then recycle the rest. “Either they get sold-off for funding for the organization or they get rebuilt and have a free software set-up operating system put on them,” said Kane.
But I know what you’re thinking. What about my data? What about my hard drive? Those are the questions that keep about three old computers sitting in my home office that I’m afraid to recycle. Kane said they wipe your hard drives clean before reusing them.
“We’re going to take steps and destroy that data,” he said. “We are not interested in the data. We never want to see that data. We want to make that data go away.”
Hard drives that can’t be reused are destroyed.
Kane said this non-profit group is focused on sustainable computing.
“At one time it was an expensive and high-value piece of hardware, and unfortunately due to the way technology marches-on, it’s become a doorstop,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be turned into something that can be used by someone else.”
Free Geek Seattle also trains people who want to get involved, and they’re always looking for people to give them old computers to reuse and groups who would like to get a refurbished computer.
