Old VHS tape recycle

Old VHS tape recycle: a reader asks…

In trying to clean out/declutter the house, I unearthed what appear to be 10 unused VHS tapes. Since they are obsolete (or almost so), how do recycle or dispose of them safely? I looked in your library but didn’t come up with the answer.

More and more municipalities are going towards single-stream recycling which makes it easy to drop just about anything into the recycle bin. Sometimes this can actually cause more problems, such as with VHS tapes. The problem is that those old cassettes are made out of various parts, and some of the parts are easily recyclable while others aren’t. Specifically, the videotape itself isn’t recyclable, while the tape cassette is. So if you want to be ‘green’, you should first pull out all of the tape and toss that in the garbage, and then put the empty cassette into the recycle bin. That’s not a guarantee that your old cassettes will get recycled, but you’re giving them a better chance.

If you don’t separate the recyclable parts from the non-recyclable parts, there’s a good chance your old tapes will end up in a landfill, regardless of whether you use your recycling bin or not. Even single-stream recycling companies only do a minimal amount of work in separating recycle items. These companies usually send everything down a conveyor belt with various workers (or automated machines) picking out the easy-to-recycle items and leaving everything else on the belt. At the end of the line, the items that haven’t been separated out go into a landfill.

Another alternative is to ship those old tapes to GreenDisk (http://www.greendisk.com/). I recognize that this will cost you something in shipping charges, but at least you can be certain that your old VHS tapes won’t go into a landfill. You may want to keep these folks in mind for any other technology-related cast-offs you have, from computers to old CDs. GreenDisk has a complete list of the items they will accept at http://www.greendisk.com/gdsite/accept.aspx.

You should recognize that recycling is an expensive affair – there is a lot of work involved in getting those materials ready for re-processing into something new. Items that work best are all or mostly-all one material. Automotive tires, solid pieces of metal, glass, and some plastics are easy. Refuse that is made of multiple parts are not. Consider the case of your old computer:

• It is unlikely that someone can simply take your old computer and start using it, a lot of work has to be done to prepare it for use.
• there are a lot of different parts inside your computer, some of them are dangerous metals and potentially explosive items like batteries that have to be treated differently than other parts. Even the computer screen is complicated.

I have taken dozens of old computers to my local recycling center, only to see the workers toss them into a bin of other computers, thereby assuring that they could at best be used only for parts. It doesn’t matter if the computer worked or not, they don’t bother to check. You should check with your local recycling center (government or private) to find out exactly what they accept, and what they do with your cast-offs. Policies and practices vary widely, and you might find a neighboring county or city does a better job than the one where you live. It might be worth a short drive to a different municipality to be a more responsible recycler.

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