Everything old is new again

The warranty is up on your laptop, and it’s been acting strange lately, losing documents and refusing to recognize your iPod. Maybe it’s rebelling against the ugly, stained couch in your living room, which is currently hiding under a mound of too-small T-shirts.

It’s true: everyone’s got junk.

But what can we do with it all? Who ends up with it, and who are these middlemen, exactly? That couch…it’s huge. And the matching loveseat and armchair, with their matching stains and tears … they should probably go, too.

Now, some in Baton Rouge are calling a hotline that sends a white, green and blue truck to take away whatever’s cluttering your space. A call to 1-800-GOT-JUNK? connects you to Vancouver, British Columbia. The Canadians send local franchisee Tom McNamee your information. He calls you with an arrival time, calls again 30 minutes beforehand and shows up when he said he would.

A quick look at what recycling organizations need and some of the—ahem—interesting stuff they’ve actually received.

1-800-GOT-JUNK? usually retrieves:

Old furniture

Mattresses

Office equipment

Cardboard

Tools

Lawn mowers

…but they’ve also picked up:

Computers from the 37th floor of a New Orleans office building

18 months’ worth of garbage

Lubricant

Sex toys

Livestock branding irons

Spanish Armada coins and swords

Boat motors

Go-carts

CACRC can recycle:

Computer hardware and accessories

Telephones

Cell phones

DVDs

Video games and consoles

Mp3 players

Digital cameras

Beepers

Fax machines

Circuit boards

Monitors

Processors

Cables

Printers

Toner and inkjet cartridges

…but they’ve also gotten:

TV production equipment

Centrifuges

Lab equipment

Hazmat suits

Air traffic controller devices

Goodwill takes:

Clothing

Housewares

Furniture

Electronics

Artwork

Books

Movies

Accessories

…but they’ve also received:

Urn (with ashes)

Diplomas

Breast implants

Sex toys

McNamee checks out your junk, quotes a price, and if you agree, he gets to hauling.

After 20 years at Lamar and an early retirement, McNamee, 56, grew restless. He heard about 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and wanted in. “I’m organized by nature,” McNamee says. “It’s a service that people need. People love it when we’re done.”

His franchise employees include 16-year-old daughter Brennan, a University High junior, and Katie Brock, a 24-year-old former personal trainer. “People are surprised when they see two girls walk up,” Brennan says.

But these ladies get the job done. They lift everything from computers and old furniture to construction materials and 20 cubic feet of garbage.

You’ve got your space back, but where does all your old stuff go? That depends on what you tossed.

Everything that can be recycled—from computer equipment to metal—is. Useable construction materials go to Habitat for Humanity to be resold and used to build homes. Housewares and clothing go to Goodwill, a no-brainer place to send those T-shirts that mysteriously shrank in the wash.

And it’s not only a thrift store. Goodwill provides job programs for those who have barriers to employment. Whether their clients need job training or a job, or are homeless, illiterate or previously incarcerated, Goodwill is there to help.

Cindy Denney, a community relations director with Goodwill, calls the 100-year-old company the “first real social entrepreneur.”

Ninety cents from every dollar spent at Goodwill goes into programs that help ex-offenders re-enter the workforce and addicts stay clean. Other programs give mentally and physically disabled workers a chance at self-sufficiency.

“The job programs we provide to our employees—our clients—aren’t charity,” says Bob Reese, vice president of retail operations for Goodwill of Southeastern Louisiana. “These people are working for a living, they’re earning, and they’re being productive—in a lot of cases, for the first time in their lives. There’s a level of pride they feel.”

Denney says, “Everybody has a chance at Goodwill.”

And that includes donated items. Between 1,200 and 1,500 pieces of clothing come onto the floor every hour at the College Drive location. Goodwill stores in southeastern Louisiana receive donations from 200,000 people a year, and half a million people shop at those stores.

When you drop off clothes, bring along the more worn-out items, too. They’ll be bundled and sent to salvage brokers to be used as roofing materials and cleaning cloths.

But hold onto your laptop. Take that downtown to the Capital Area Corporate Recycling Council. If the hardware’s still intact, they’ll wipe out your data, refurbish the computer and make sure it gets to someone who needs it.

“A lot of times, people want to recycle their computers because they’re getting another, later, better model,” says Nancy Jo Craig, executive director of CACRC. “Sometimes even when it is broken, it’s not really broken. [Owners] have just gotten frustrated—it’s crashed or something like that, but the hardware is still fine.”

Refurbished computers are put to good use in several community programs.

Computers for Louisiana Kids teaches children in 70 schools throughout the state to build computers. “Kids can come out of high school with marketable skills,” Craig says. An average of 1,000 students participate annually.

Computers for Louisiana Families helps low-income families who have never had the chance to own a computer. The program provides some computers for under $100 and laptops for $225. In just 18 months, CACRC has provided inexpensive computers to 1,500 families.

Unusable computers are dismantled by a team of technicians. Components are sorted into boxes, and everything is shipped to a recycling vendor that pays for the goods. Those profits are used to fund the program.

The public gets a shot at CACRC’s refurbished goods once a year. Come November, a garage sale is hosted in the warehouse to coincide with America Recycles Day.

This would be a good place to replace the laptop you’ve just dropped off—and to gain some more clutter to replace everything you just got rid of.