Our nation honors its military veterans today. We recognize the dedication of the men and women who served our country in such a capacity. In addition to honoring our veterans, there are several ways we can honor and assist those in active duty, and many of those ways are green.
As fast as electronics are made, they seem to become obsolete. We upgrade on a regular basis, rarely considering what becomes of the discards. Electronic waste is a much larger problem than we acknowledge, as Annie Leonards's recent video, Story of Electronics, demonstrates.
Our Daily Green would like to showcase two non profit organizations that are not just keeping the electronics out of the waste stream, but also sharing them with soldiers, setting up Internet cafes and entertaining the troops with video games. We commend them.
JDS Computers is an organization composed entirely of volunteers. To date they have donated 743 laptop computers to Internet cafes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These cafes allow the soldiers to communicate with their families and loved ones back stateside. They accept laptop donations, Pentium III or higher. If you're upgrading a laptop soon, consider checking their site for information how to donate your old laptop.
Games for Heroes is another electronic recycling mission. Two high school boys in Westchester NY have been collecting hand held video game systems and cartridges and sending them to soldiers. When founders Peter Gallagher and Jack Wilson realized that most of the soldiers weren't much older than they were, the founded this charity.
2 comments :
I didn't know Annie Leonard had made a new video -- I loved "The Story of Stuff." Thanks for mentioning the electronics recycling charities for soldiers!
I love Annie Leonard's work... to me, it just makes SENSE. I think our society built on consumerism just has to stop growing sometime. Children stop growing when they reach a certain age, why shouldn't the market also mature?
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