Be good to the environment (and get cash)

I want to share something I found this week that is going to be a great help for people for a long time to come: gazelle.com

Without even having to sign up, you tell them the electronic gadget you have, and they tell you how much they will pay you for it. Then they send you a box, you send them the electronic (they pay for shipping!), and they will send you the money. Yeay!

No having to take pictures and upload them to ebay, and having to wait and guess how much you're going to get for something. I compared the price gazelle offered me for one (of the many) item I have to what it was getting on ebay and it was pretty much the same. Just the fact that they send me a box alone makes up for any minor difference.

If this wasn't enough, there are 3 other things that make me love this company even more:

1) If the electronic doesn't have any value, they will send you a box anyway and take care of recycling it properly
2) If the electronic device is in good enough shape to be powered up, they will erase any personal data in it before recycling it
3) Their philosophy of recycling is better than simply properly disposing of it: they will try to reuse the item first
4) They are a local Boston company
5) The website is extremely well done and easy to use

Okay, so those were 5 things.

I read somewhere that someone who works there used to work at Kozmo. Which was only the sweetest service ever to be implemented. But never mind that if you didn't live in Cambridge or vicinities circa 2000.

As always, the best strategy for the environment (and your pocket) is not to buy things in the first place. The very second best is to reuse things. So, if you do have STUFF sitting around your house, do yourself a favor and get some money for it. At the same time, someone out there can reuse an item that already exists instead of getting a brand new one.

Here is an article about it: The Netflix of Junk

While on the subject, Hands Across the Water is the best place I have found to donate books to.

And yes, share the news!