Cheyenne Botanic Gardens celebrates Earth Day

What better place to celebrate Earth Day at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on Saturday, April 22, 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.? Tour the Conservatory, enjoy the spring tulip show, have lunch at the Chicago Dog House food truck and attend a series of classes. Bring in and old computer or other electronics for recycling and Blue Peak will provide you with a free Earth Day plant. Fee for the three "Let's Talk About Water-wise Landscaping" series of classes is $20. Please pre-register. 

High Plains Gardening, 11 a.m.-noon: Horticulturist Isaiah Smith will be presenting the steps you can take to turn your yard into a water wise landscape while increasing the aesthetic appeal. Starting with small steps to a full renovation of your existing landscape you will learn how to garden in the High Plains successfully.

Crevice Gardening, 1-2 p.m.: Isaiah Smith will discuss the history and techniques of crevice gardening. Ready to learn more and plant a mountain in your front yard? There will also be tips to how to construct and plant your very own crevice garden.

Turf-grass Management, 2:30-3:30 p.m.: Do you want to manage your High Plains lawn with less fuss and fewer inputs? Director Scott Aker will give you some tips and tricks that could help you have a nicer lawn while using less water, less fertilizer, and less herbicide to control weeds. 

FMI: 307-637-6458 or botanic.org

I'll be volunteering at the front desk from 2:30-5 p.m. to field your questions and then send you to someone who knows the answers. 

 

Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County seeks entries for "Salvage Art Show & Auction"

I was on the first board of directors for Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County. That was way back in the early 1990s and it's gratifying to see the gains made by the local Habitat unit. I visited the ReStore last summer looking for replacement fittings for my outdoor hoses. Since I'm not the most handy guy on the planet, I sought out a ReStore volunteer who got me the right stuff. It's good to see that the place is expanding to bring even more revenue to a great cause. And Habitat promotes recycling and reuse and the arts! You local creatives might want to enter this:

Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County will be hosting a Salvage Art Show & Auction in conjunction with Habitat’s ReStore Annex grand opening in late spring and you are invited to participate! The Salvage Art Show & Sale will focus on pieces made primarily of recycled, salvaged and found objects. If chosen to participate, artists will receive a $15 voucher to use to buy items from the ReStore. If you would like to be a part of the show or have any questions, contact Elizabeth Williams at elizabeth@cheyennehfh.org or 307.637.8067 by Wednesday, February 29.

Casper developer Steve Grimshaw recycles everything (including the kitchen sink) for new project

Casper developer Steve Grimshaw says that he just wants to be a "responsible builder." To that end, he hired contractor Pete Peterson to recycle whatever he could from the old KC Apartments that were being demolished to make way for the new Sunshine Apartments near downtown. Peterson was able to recycle 83 percent of the building. That included concrete that was crushed to go into the foundations of the new building. Also claw-foot bathtubs, cabinets, door locks and faucet handles. Also salvaged were old cement slabs (shown above) stamped with the date "1917" that will pave the new public arts space that is part of the project. A coalition of Casper organizations recently received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the arts space. Photo by Dan Cepeda, Casper Star-Tribune. Read entire article at http://trib.com/news/local/casper/developer-recycles-notorious-casper-apartment/article_e504182e-4cd8-55b8-bf54-6d72b0b292a1.html#ixzz1h5EsEb00

"Sustainability and the Arts" exhibit reception Sept. 20 at UW

Recycling and creativity on display at "Upcycling 101" event in Casper

Abigail Schneider, left, and Kelleen Gilstad spread mortar on an outdoor table to create a mosaic with found items at Upcycling 101 on Saturday afternoon in James Reeb Park in Casper. Little Hands, a local art education group, put on the arts festival to demonstrate what can be done with recycled items. Kerry Huller photo.

While I attended the Wyoming Writers, Inc., conference Saturday in Casper, another arts-oriented event was happening across town.

"Upcycling 101" was held at Winter Memorial Presbyterian Church in north Casper. “Upcycling,” according to a story by Tom Morton in Sunday's Casper Star-Tribune, is "the uptown term for taking trash and making it pretty if not practical, said Kate Schneider, an organizer of the event. 'Upcycling is taking things that normally would be thrown away and creating useful, beautiful, fun stuff.' ”

Morton described one of the upcycling demonstrations:

A portable forge heats tools with large- or medium-size rings at one end and handles at the other.

Meanwhile, Betsy Bower places an empty wine bottle in the corner of a box and seats it in the sand at a playground during the first “Upcycling 101” event at the Winter Memorial Presbyterian Church in north Casper.

An Upcycling participant dons a glove, pulls the tool from the forge, places it over the bottle and holds it flush against the top of the box.

Bower rotates the bottle as the participant pulls the hot tool against the side of the bottle.
The tool is removed after a half-minute of turning; she picks up the bottle and dunks it in a bucket of water, where a slight crack is heard.

Bower retrieves the bottom half of the bottle for the participant to sand smooth the edge, creating a unique drinking glass.

--snip—

Besides the turning-wine-bottles-into-glasses miracle, Bower had on display a creation that wasn’t particularly useful, definitely not beautiful, but certainly fun.

She enhanced a child’s bicycle by mounting a blender on a wooden platform on the rear bumper and running a vertical axle from the blender to the top of the rear tire, which would drive the axle to power the blender. Sort of margaritas on the go.

Betsy actually made smoothies with her upcycled bicycle. Although margaritas-on-the-go may be next.

After the writing conference ended on Sunday, I had a chance to visit with Betsy at her family's business, Bower Welding & Ornamental Iron, located in an industrial section of Casper several blocks northeast of downtown. Betsy's father Tom built the business over the course of several decades. He moved to Casper in the 1970s from Douglas with his wife Cindy, who is a board member of Wyoming Writers, Inc. Tom had some welding experience and he went to work in the oil patch. Casper was -- and still is -- a good place for a welder. He estimates there are at least a thousand welders working out of this city of 55,000 souls. It's mostly oil field work. There's one big company that manufactures truck bodies. And there is lots of residential welding to do. The work is functional and decorative. Tom showed off a fanciful stairway railing that is one of Betsy's projects. Imagine a series of intertwined steel rods, fashioned to look like tree limbs.

While Betsy's father and I spoke, Betsy rode up on her customized bike. Not the blender bike. This was a "fat-tire" style bicycle with various artistic elements welded by Betsy. I noticed the bike had no gears, which makes riding in hilly Casper a challenge.

Betsy learned her craft at her father's shop. Over time, her interests turned more toward the performing arts. She spent some time with a traveling circus, learning skills on the trapeze and twirling flaming batons. She's performed a number of times around Casper. Last summer, we had a chance to perform together during ARTCORE'S "Poetry & Music" Series. It was at the old Jazz Spot downtown. I read the first part of my short story and then Betsy performed yoga movements on the trapeze to original music. I read the second half of my story. Betsy wrapped up the evening with a dance featuring flaming batons. I will let you decide which parts of the evening got the most attention.

It was Betsy's need for a sturdy trapeze platform that led her back to the welding shop. She was rehearsing in a building where the trapeze was hung from the ceiling. As you might guess, performers need dependable equipment or they wind up on their noggins on the floor. So Betsy decided to build her own dependable and portable metal structure. She hauls it to her gigs and assembles it on site.

Besides unique bikes, Betsy builds metal tables and decorative items. Some of her work is on display in her father's business office. A twisted metal sculpture supports a thick glass table top. On the table is a welded metal flower pot with metal flowers.

Betsy plans to hit the road in the near future as a metal artist. I asked if she was going to incorporate her performance skills with her metal work. She thought that the title of "performing metal artist" had a nice ring. There are many traveling metal bands. Maybe she could be a metal metal artist?

I digress. Obviously we'll be hearing more from Betsy Bower.

Saturday's "Upcycling 101" was also a fund-raiser for an historic park.

Besides fun, the Upcycling event raised awareness for the Casper Young Professionals Network to resurrect the 1970s-era James Reeb Memorial Community Playground adjacent to the church. The Rev. James Reeb, who moved from Casper to Washington, D.C., then Boston, was beaten to death in Selma, Ala., in March 1965, and is regarded as the first white Protestant minister martyr of the civil rights movement.

The Young Professionals Network is applying for grants to redo the playground by replacing the run-down and fenced-in basketball court with a community garden and chess tables, new playground equipment, a gazebo, trees, horseshoe pits and landscaping, Brandon Daigle said.
Daigle, a member of the network and an architecture student, drafted the general plans for the park, he said. 

But he wanted the children who attended the Upcycling event to imagine what they would like and draw their ideas with the crayons and paper he made available, he said.

Even the basketball court and gravel in the park will be given new lives, Daigle said.

“The asphalt will be recycled; the gravel will be used as a [pavement] base,” he said.

Rehabbing a park named after a martyr for Civil Rights in the U.S. seems like an amazingly good cause. If you want to donate or find out more, go to www.casperyoungprofessionals.org

Arts and design and kookiness for a good cause: Wabisabi Intergalactic Fashion Show in Moab

For those trekking to Moab this month... This looks like a barrel of fun -- and its all for a good cause:

Each year artists and designers create outrageous theme based-fashion lines that are auctioned off as a fundraiser for Moab’s nonprofit organizations. Fashion designers whose intricate outfits are crafted by hand and only from recycled materials have sold for more than $600. Outfits from previous shows have included gladiators costumed in a kaleidoscope armor made from aluminum cans, dresses glittering with patterns made from smashed mirrors, and a "fur coat" made entirely from kids' stuffed animals. This year’s fashion show theme is "Intergalactic" with each designer creating out of this world wearable art. FMI: http://www.wabisabimoab.org

So that's where it's all going?

Cheyenne is shipping its s*** to Colorado

Go to http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20100428/NEWS01/4280340/1002/CUSTOMERSERVICE02

Cowboy boots making smaller carbon footprint

I was glad to see recycling bins on the grounds of Cheyenne Frontier Days events this week. Cheyenne's 10-day summer event must generate tens of thousands of plastic bottles and cans. So many thirsty parade-goers and rodeo fans and music-lovers. Not all the containers find their way into the recycling bins, but installing one next to every trash can helps a lot.

The greening of the CFD may have been caused, in part, by similar efforts at the Greeley Stampede that takes place early in July in Greeley, about 45 minutes south of here. Cheyenne Frontier Days is the older and bigger event, but Stampede P.R. people inundated regional media this year with their "going green" promos. Here's how it was described in the June 18 Greeley Tribune:

The annual event, scheduled for June 25-July 5, has partnered with Waste Management, Coors Brewing Co. and the city of Greeley to initiate a multi-phase, environmentally friendly program. The endeavor aims to reduce waste, save energy and leave a lighter carbon footprint during this year's celebration.

Guests will be able to ride their bikes to the Stampede and park them for free. Bike racks will be available by the 14th Avenue entrance, near the Splash Park and by the Poudre River Trail entrance. Guests are not able to ride bicycles through the park during the event, but will now have a place to secure their bikes.

Visitors also can enjoy Coors products served in Greenware disposable cups. Greenware is a line of premium cups made of natural materials that are fully compostable — made entirely from an renewable resource, corn. Once used and disposed of, the cups will be completely composted in about 50 days.

Specially marked blue containers will be available where visitors can place empty plastic bottles and cans. The city of Greeley will collect plastic bottles and aluminum cans for Waste Management to collect and transport to recycling centers.

That's a pretty good start. No word yet on how they plan to cut down on ozone-depleting steer farts.

On a similar note, the CFD recycling plan includes carting thousands of tons of manure to Laramie County's composting facility. That's a dirty job but I'm glad they're doing it. Local gardners make use of that composting facility which in turn leads to tasty veggies and pretty flowers and healthy trees. Conservative cowpokes and hippie-dippy veggie wranglers are more intertwined than either camp will admit.

Here's more green news from the CFD web site:

Cheyenne Frontier Days, Trihydro Corporation (a Laramie-based engineering and environmental consulting firm), Swire Coca Cola and the City of Cheyenne have agreed to partner again in a major recycling program at Frontier Park. According to Concessions Chairman Matt Jones, the recycling program that was started last year was a great success. "We recycled 5 tons of plastic last year, and we hope to beat that amount this year," said Jones. "We encourage all of our guests to use the recycling cans, located with trash cans, on the park."

Trihydro provides engineering and environmental services to industrial, commercial, and government clients. The firm, founded in 1984, has grown strategically to employ approximately 260 professionals and support staff, of which 160 are based in the firm’s Wyoming offices (Cheyenne, Casper, Lander, and Laramie).

CFD has recycled all the manure collected during the ten day event at a local composting facility for many years. "We have also separated and collected our cardboard for recycling for a few years now," said Jones. "This year we will also be recycling aluminum cans along with the plastic bottles." Jones and CFD officials met with Swire Coca Cola, Dennis Pino (City Sanitation), Trihydro, and others earlier this year to discuss the continuation of collecting plastic during CFD for recycling. Working with the City of Cheyenne, CFD will collect as much plastic and aluminum on the park during the celebration as possible, separate these items from the general waste, and send the plastic and aluminum for recycling, thereby keeping it out of the landfill.

In addition to separating plastic bottles and aluminum cans from the trash during show time, CFD will also recycle these items from committee buildings around the park and the headquarters building. Last year, CFD officials made an effort to replace old bathroom fixtures with newer more water efficient models where appropriate. Parking lot lights were replaced with updated fixtures which provide more light while decreasing power usage. In addition, every year, the CFD grounds crew winterizes the park to shut down buildings with only seasonal usage, thereby decreasing energy and water usage. They also pull weeds by hand rather than using chemical pesticides while maintaining the park.

There is a bandwagon effect here that people who put on parades know very well. It's patriotic to fly the green flag, and cowboys are all about being patriotic.

Here at home, my family and our visitors from afar are going through hundreds of plastic water bottles, aluminum soda cans and craft brew bottles. My son Kevin has hauled many containers of recyclables to the Big Blue Bins at the K-Mart parking lot. We're also cutting down on water usage by taking only one shower per week. Just kidding -- that's just me. Hey, I'm on vacation!

The City of Cheyenne has made great strides the past few years toward cutting down on water use. It's expanding its curbside recycling program. The greenway is terrific and it prods residents to get out and walk and run and ride bikes to work. On the negative side, our public transportation system is laughable and sprawl continues to the north and east. Laramie County has no wise-growth plan. Cheyenne needs to support downtown residential efforts, such as those promoted in Sheridan this summer at "Living Upstairs in Wyoming."

We're getting there -- but still playing catch-up to some of Colorado's communities, such as our neighbor Fort Collins and our bigger neighbor, Denver. Read about some of their efforts at http://smartercities.nrdc.org/

More Earth Day activities April 18 in Cheyenne

The Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne will hold an Earth Day Festival on Saturday, April 18, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Sixteen organizations from around Cheyenne will be set up booths to inform visitors about conservation, recycling, wildlife, ecology, and other topics related to maintaining a clean and healthy environment for Wyomingites. This is an educational family event that will include a scavenger hunt and free t-shirts for kids, face painting, refreshments, and a bake sale. There will also be a cell phone recycling booth, so please bring your old cell phones!

FMI: Sue Castenada, 307-777-7021.

Earlier, hummingbirdminds wrote about an Earth Day Festival at the Cheyenne UU Church. The two venues are only six blocks apart. Catch one, and then the other. Both precede the actual Earth Day date of April 22.

Earth Day Fest April 18 at UU Church

The local Unitarian Universalist Church actively supports issues relating to peace and justice, the arts and ecology.

On Saturday, Aprul 18, the UU Church will sponsor an Earth Day Festival from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Vendor tables will feature info from conservation groups and sale items by companies with green products. Students will display arts and science projects, and there will be screenings of environmental films.

Donate aluminum cans to Habitat for Humanity, eyeglasses to the Lions Club, or prescription meds to the Laramie County Centralized Pharmacy. Recycle your printer cartridges and safely dispose of your hazardous materials.

This free event will take place in the Social Hall of the UU Church, 3005 Thomes Ave.

FMI: Green Coalition of Cheyenne at 307-632-7521.

Environment focus of May 15 Dem meeting

The May 15 meeting of the Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition will focus on environmental issues. Speakers will be Wyoming State Representative Mary Throne and City of Cheyenne Sanitation Director Dennis Pino. The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Sunflower Room in the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne. Free and open to the public, even if you're a Republican (who knows -- you might learn that global warming actually exists).

Wyoming faces a host of environmental issues. Oil and gas development tearing up the Wyoming Range. Coal gasification. Wind farms. Solar energy. Geothermal power. Water quality. Air quality (ozone levels rising dramatically near Pinedale). Drought. Threat of unregulated uranium mining returning to the state (Today's Casper Star-Trib: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received 30 applications for new uranium mines, restarts of closed mines and expansions of existing mines. Twenty of them are in Wyoming.")

First question to Mr. Pino: When will curbside recycling begin?

Cheyenne curbside recycling a step closer

Can you find Earth Day cards among this spring's Mother's Day and "Happy Graduation" cards? I should have checked our local grocery store when I was there last night buying emergency supplies of Ben & Jerry's. Earth Day cards are a great idea for no other reason than they could be sent to Republican relatives. Nay, you say, even Republicans are earth-friendly in the 21st century. John McCain has an environmental platform. Poppycock, say I, recalling how Our Current President has spent his time. When he's not waging war on Iraqis and clearing brush on his Crawford ranch, he's waging war on the environment. Lately he's mumbled something about climate change actually existing, but we are so used to him talking out of both sides of his mouth that we don't pay attention any more.

On the local scene, the City of Cheyenne is one step closer to curbside recycling. The City Council's Finance Committee voted unanimously yesterday to buy a truck (from Canada) outfitted for recycling. Later this spring, the full council will be voting on buying the truck and approving the $1.4 million curbside recycling program. There's already a pilot program in the Sun Valley neighborhood that has been wildly successful. The city's been picking up 10 tons of recyclables from the area every other week. According to this morning Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, that means that about one-third of the trash generated in Sun Valley stays out of the landfill, which is so close to reaching capacity that some of our trash is being trucked to a landfill near Ault, Colo. Even recycling naysayers have to be concerned about that.

City officials say that the big blue recycling bins will remain at three locations around town. I visit the ones at my local Albertson's parking lot once a week. I'm always impressed by how many people of all ages are there, recycling their Diet Coke cans, Bud bottles and copies of the daily paper. Most of the time, the bins are full before the trucks get around to picking up the stuff. But that's progress.

Celebrate Earth Day by doing something earth friendly. That could be replacing your light bulbs, riding your bike to work, or donating money to Democrats running for Congress and the presidency.

Wyoming plays catch-up with recycling

As I bring my cans and bottles to Cheyenne's blue-bin recycling posts, I often wonder what becomes of my cast-offs. How far does my fruit cocktail can or Budweiser bottle have to go to be transformed into something else? With rising fuel prices, what's the cost of hauling aluminum cans to Los Angeles or New York or maybe even China?

I've talked to some of my fellow recyclers about this and they don't know the answers. They're a diverse bunch. An airman from Warren AFB with two kids in his SUV said he was from upstate New York where they'd had curbside recycling for 20 years. He wondered why we didn't have something similar. There is a pilot program in Cheyenne's Sun Valley neighborhood. No telling how long the pilot will last and whether it will prove economical enough to expand citywide. One good sign: cranky letters promoting and bemoaning the curbside plan have begun to show up on our local op-ed pages. Once it reaches the op-ed stage, you know that implementation can't be far behind.

I see many families hauling their stuff to our three blue-bin locations. Kids instructing their parents on the wonders of recycling. Retirees, too, whom I see when I use part of my lunch hour for recycling. Lots of women, too, of all ages. More women than men, if my unscientific observations are any gauge. It's possible there here in the rugged West it's the duty of the womenfolk to recycle, the menfolk being too busy wrangling cattle or shooting varmints. It's also possible that women are more attuned to the benefits of recycling and saving the planet.

Wyoming's Sam Western provides some answers to recycling's true costs in a column he wrote for wyofile.com. As befitting someone who's been a correspondent for London's Economist magazine since 1985, Sam did his homework. He estimates that only three to five percent of the state's trash is recycled, compared to a national average of 27 percent.

Aluminum cans typically go east to Anheuser-Busch's Metal Container Corporation; cardboard and paper travel to plants in Montana, Oregon, and Washington, sometimes China; steel cans and small scrap end up at the Nucor Steel plant in Plymouth, Utah.

That's a pretty long haul, paper going to China. But maybe my paper only has to travel next door to Montana. As a writer and reader, I recycle a lot of paper, both at home and at work. All those gin bottles, too, can't forget those. The good part about glass is that there's a company in Wyoming that recycles it.

Contractors in Campbell County, which imports most of its gravel from South Dakota or Johnson County, use crushed glass (called cullet) as filler around landscaping, septic drain fields, retaining wall backfill, and drain pipe bedding.

Other Wyoming companies are getting into the act, recycling plastic bottles and old tires. There's a company in Cheyenne, Tatooine, that collects computers and other electronic devices, breaks them down, and sells the parts. It's the old junkyard concept where you discard your old jalopy and gearheads use it for parts for their old jalopies, which they call classic cars.

Read Sam's entire column under the "Guest" link at http://www.wyofile.com/. He's done an impressive amount of research about trash, landfills and recycling, lassoing all those facts and figures into easily digestible bites. Sam's always been good at the details, as readers saw in his book, "Pushed off the Mountain, Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for its Soul." I ran into Sam last Thursday in Cheyenne during a presentation by photographer Adam Jahiel of Story. Sam accompanied Adam to Kyrgyzstan during a trip organized by Jackson's Vista 360. Sam interviewed and wrote while Adam shot the photos of the country's horse culture. The photos were beautiful. The landscape was reminiscent of certain parts of Wyoming. Adam made a brief mention of an upcoming book about the project, but wouldn't reveal any details.

Cheyenne wins award for water recycling

You have to take water seriously when living in the semi-arid West. We get about 15 inches of moisture annually in southeastern Wyoming, although at times this summer it’s felt as if 15 inches were falling in each storm. But we’re about average now, after a so-so snow year and a dry spring.

That’s why it was great news to hear about the City of Cheyenne winning an award for its innovative water recycling project, which saves the city a million gallons of water per day. The Environmental Protection Agency, a federal office that’s almost as beloved in WYO at the Bureau of Land Management, gave Cheyenne is PISCES award. It recognizes the creative use of federal funds to "improve wastewater restructure."

Cheyenne cleanses its waste water with "beneficial bacteria" and untraviolet light to turn it into "Class A" recycled water which is then used to water city parks. Clint Bassett, water conservation specialist with the Board of Public Utilities, says that this water would have been clean enough to meet drinking water standards 30 years ago. It also saves the city money.

I’ll think about this when I pay my next BOPU bill. I have to use regular city water on my lawn, which costs $3.59 per thousand gallons. Recycled water costs $2.70 per thousand gallons. But how would I get access to it? I’d need separate pipes, which would be an investment for me and for the city. I guess I’ll just have to look forward to the day that all city water is purified recycled water. And that day may not be too far off.

Rock Springs and Green River are two other Wyoming towns with recycling projects. More to come, I’m sure, in this land of little rain but lots of wind.

Speaking of wind, when will each of our houses be equipped with energy-producing windmills? I have seen some of these smaller units in back of rural homes. There’s a guy on the road from Laramie to Centennial who uses solar panels and a windmill for his prairie home’s energy needs. He undoubtedly has a well for water.

These are the innovative people that will give us energy sufficiency in the future. A great time to be a power innovator, or an engineer in environmentally friendly energy production. Writers, notoriously worthless in these areas, can at least spread the word.

E-cycler expands in Cheyenne

Tatooine Electronic Systems, named for Luke Skywalker's desert-like home planet, may be the only e-cycler in the U.S. to get a permit to dismantle and recycle used electronic equipment.

According to a recent story in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Tatooine did the unthinkable in Wyoming -- it asked the government to approve its operation before the bureaucrats came knocking. There were concerns at the proposed new building site about air and water contamination as computers and TVs are torn asunder. So the company's owner, Jeff Stumpf, consulted the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.

Given a permit to proceed by DEQ, Tatooine is now accepting e-waste from a four-state area. Employees break down the equipment into recycable components and then the waste is shipped elsewhere for final processing. A 7,000-square-foot facility will be built that will up the capacity from 8 tons per day to 120. There are other facilities like this in the U.S. But no other states require a permit.

I will have to admit that over the years, I have disposed of old computers the old-fashioned way -- in the dumpster. I also have done the same with TVs and stereos and monitors. I like the idea of taking these items to a place named after a fictional planet where the Jawa are the ultimate recyclers, and the Skywalker family business is "moisture farming."

My question: will Tataooine take my old console TV? It's a monster.