- Hi.
I'm Chris Velazco with The Washington Post's Help Desk,
where we help you make sense of the tech in your life,
and, full disclosure, I have a little secret
that I think a lot of you might have, too.
So, for the sake of getting to know each other a little better,
let me just show you what I'm talking about.
This used to be a drawer where I kept Ziploc bags
and parchment paper and other kitchen things,
but it eventually became where I just threw all kinds of junk.
I mean, just look at this stuff.
I've got batteries and cables, old phones
and whatever this thing is.
As much as I would love to just chuck this stuff in the trash,
that's honestly the last thing anyone should do.
Some of these bits of digital detritus --
like these rechargeable batteries --
they contain dangerous heavy metals that,
if they wound up in landfills, could leech into the soil
and even local water supplies.
Others are chock-full of rare metals that,
as the name sort of implies, are both difficult to find
and difficult to pull out of the ground.
So it's better for basically everyone involved
that we don't run out of these materials.
So here's my advice.
If you have old gadgets and batteries shoved
in a drawer of shame like I do, find a way to repurpose them.
I can give you some tips on how to do this,
and if you can't, well,
we can talk about ways to properly recycle.
Let's start with smartphones, since I'm sure a lot of you
have old ones laying around.
These are really versatile.
With the right apps and a cheap little dock thing,
for example, you can turn an old iPhone
or an Android phone into a smart bedside clock.
If they're new enough to play nice with Siri
or Google Assistant,
you can also use them to control some of your smart home gadgets,
like your lights, right from bed.
Hey, Siri, living room off.
- Okay. The accessories are off.
- And things don't end there.
If you install an app called Alfred,
for example, on your old phones,
you can just pepper them around your house
to use as security cameras you can remotely check in on
from your current phone or from the web.
If you're anything like me, you're probably really good
at losing some of your smart TV remotes, too,
because they are -- let's face it --
they're just usually a little too small,
but that's not a problem either.
Lots of the companies who make these streaming media gadgets
also offer apps that turn your phone into little remotes,
and even better, ones that you can type the names of shows
or apps into.
There's a lot you can do with these things
after you've bought a new phone,
and I would encourage you to spend a little time online
to find ways to upcycle these devices that make sense for you,
and if that doesn't work, look, you could always sell them.
My favorite site for scoring good deals on old gadgets is
Swappa, which you can think of as sort of eBay,
if eBay was strictly about tech.
There are other services
that will offer you cash for your old gadgets,
many of which don't require as much work,
since anything you sell on Swappa
requires you to create a listing the way you would on eBay,
but lots of people I've spoken to have reported
getting better prices for their old gadgets on Swappa,
so it's definitely worth taking a look at.
If your old phones are maybe a little too old
to get a good price on, there's always recycling,
and I found that one of the best places to take your old tech
is, ironically, where a lot of you
probably got it in the first place -- Best Buy.
Seriously, just lug all of your old stuff
up to the customer service desk,
and they'll send it out to their recycling partners who can see
if your gear can be repurposed before it gets broken down.
Really quickly, though, there is something I have to tell you.
When I was in college 12 years ago, I worked at a Best
Buy, and the company put me in a commercial
to talk about smartphones
because I really like talking about smartphones.
I'm a huge phone geek, and I want people to be
just as excited for this stuff as I am.
We care about transparency here at The Post,
so I wanted you to know.
Alright. Back to the video.
Recycling, by the way, is probably the best thing
you can do with your old rechargeable batteries.
Like I said, these are full of nasty stuff,
and they need to be handled responsibly.
So if you don't have a Best Buy or anything like that near you,
be sure to check out Call2Recycle.
org.
You can punch in your zip code, and it'll show you nearby spots
where you can drop off old batteries and cellphones.
We're looking forward to covering more
about sustainable technology
and the e-waste problem here at the Help Desk,
but if you have your own personal tech dilemmas
that you need help wrapping your head around, let us know.
You can e-mail me or the rest of the Help Desk.
We're here to serve you, so let us know how we can do it.
Thanks for watching and see you again soon.