Man, this is just your week for telling people to do illegal things, ain't it? What's got into you?

Sure, and when they break and mercury and whatever other toxic substances leak out, it'll be extra cool and artsy then.

I remember reading somewhere that incorrectly discarded computer terminals are pretty biohazardous. Like tossing spent fuel rods out the car window. I'm going to sound like a tree-hugger and a buzz killer, I know, but if these poison the ground water, it won't be such a joke, will it?

art's cool. but that shit is toxic, and usually you're supposed to pay to have those things handled properly. here's the way to go:

http://www.metrokc.gov/dnrp/swd/electronics/recyclers.asp

Maybe you should be encouraging correct disposal rather than pollution?

Whoa, I suck.

It's okay, Dan. I didn't know monitors were poisonous either until last year, when I was prevented from disposing of one at my local landfill.

And I don't care what anyone says, the gold fire hydrants were cool.

Also make it a drive to collect old monitors and we can figure out some way to dispose of properly. I am manly man with manly truck so I can take a manly bunch. I wonder where the rest end up?

That's what I love about NYC. You have to live in a 300 sq ft apartment, but you put your old monitor out on the street, and magic sanitation fairies spirit it away...

Correct disposal involves driving these things to a collection station, so it's only correct in a relative sense. The city should do a better job making proper disposal a live option for those likely to be disposing of them.

It's not like a bit of rain, even if it were likely, is going to cause these things to leech shit into the groundwater. They don't dissolve.

That traffic circle needed a bit of something. It has something of a desert feel to it. The monitor stash seems to fit.

If monitors had lasted a few hundred thousand more years, evolution would have produced an animal capable of eating them anways.

Look people - if you just want to act like pigs, toss all of your unwanted, useless, computer-related garbage into Seattle's traffic donuts - it's so artsy-fartsy biohazardous chic. Today you have to pay (per lb.) for the privilege of discarding your cyberspace detritus - some place down on 6th Street. Surely one of you geeks out there have the address. But in the meantime, marigolds, zinnias and the occasional calla lily bring beauty to these traffic circles like an old lady's rouge-stained powder puff. Monitor yourselves, restraining the impulse to uglify your environs.

There are cheap, illegal disposal crews that roam Seattle. For real. In Greenwood, I go into my (now former) office one day and find a couch and a couple of boxes of personal papers in the back driveway. A day later, another couch appears. Our landlord is unreachable. I call the Got Trash people, they haul, my landlord agrees to take the amount of my office's rent.

Over previous and following months, I see lots of garbage land at various places along the alley (this is the one behind Gordito's). Sometimes a broken filing cabinet. Sometimes black-plastic bagged trash. Sometimes broken furniture.

I have also spotted this all over town in patterns.

There's an Occam's Razor explanation that rather than pay dumping fees and wait in line and such, some guys with trucks charge a very low rate, and then drive around at night dropping stuff off.

Once they spot a place that nobody cares about -- trash is accumulating -- they drop more.

It's like garbage graffiti.

If the computer terminals are so fucking awful that you have to boo fucking hoo, STOP USING THEM. Read a book, write a letter. jesus

No, no, Postergirl. We have to drive our cars, use our computers, eat our meat, and feel awful about it. It's the least we can do.

Dan, are you under house arrest? It's Friday night.

Nah, I'm babysitting. Wait, I mean parenting.

The big office supply stores (Staples, Office Depot) will accept old computer equipment and recycle it for a low fee too. I dropped off an old monitor and computer tower there not too long ago for about $20. No lines, no waiting and not that different in cost than King County.

Many of the lighting stores will take used flourescent bulbs too for a small fee. Those are mighty toxic too.

PC monitors are ugly. I would never leave my pretty Mac monitor in a traffic circle!

I, for one, support the illegal, biohazardous dumping of Cathode Ray Tubes in Seattle traffic circles. My support is conditional, of course— I believe it to be a reasonable action, given the current civic situation. As it stands, in the City of Seattle, there is no way to dispose of a CRT that is both:

1) Legal, and

2) Free

It's bad enough that you can't leave a CRT on the curb with your trash for regular garbage pickup— you can't even drive it to a city Transfer Station. No, you've got to find a private disposal service, drive your CRT out to them, and then pay them somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 to take it off your hands.

Screw that, I say. I'll save myself the hassle and cash, and make my opinion known into the bargain via civil disobedience, by dumping my old TVs on public land.

If you don't want old TVs and computer monitors piling up on traffic circles, in parks, and in other public spaces, then you need to start asking your local government to provide proper disposal service.

RE-PC will take monitors for $10-20 (everything else is free).

Seattle needs a http://www.freegeek.com

Yay, RE-PC! I love those guys.

I saw a monitor sitting on a parking strip in Fremont yesterday. Boo.

Does anyone know what Re-PC does with the monitors you pay them to take off your hands?

They sell them. If you're in the market for a plain, cheap keyboard or say a monitor from 1991, you can get it there.

From: http://www.repc.com/

"At RE-PC, we re-use as much of the techno-waste as we possibly can.
Computers, peripherals and related products are refurbished and sold
through our retail outlets and online. Some material gets a last
chance at re-use in our AS-IS section. At end-of-life, computers and
peripherals are disassembled (where possible) and the circuit boards
are recycled through a reprocessor. The cases and other hardware are
recycled as scrap metal and the monitors are recycled through a
firm that prepares them for glass to glass recycling (to keep the
approx. 6 pounds of lead out of the environment)."

Sounds like a good company.

I'm a little mystified by the passion and anger with the person or persons who are planting this particular traffic cirlce with monitors. Surely no one expects these monitors to remain in place for years, gradually decomposing, leaching lead and mercury into the pristine natural environment that is 14th and Howell, right? At some point someone is going to haul these things away—perhaps even the artists/jokesters who put them there? (A long shot, I realize.)

The assumption seems to be that once something is left on a city street, there it remains, for all eternity. Not true, right?

Does anyone know what the city does with computer monitors it finds in the trash or hauls off of, say, traffic circles?

Seattle is wired city, and I like seeing computer terminals in traffic circles - to me it is art. What'd be cooler is if they grew into a tower like ten feet high.

But I agree with Dan, the prissy enviro-types who want us all to wear our vegan hairshirts are out of touch.

Re-PC does not sell the broken monitors that you pay them to take off your hands. They likely hand them over to some middleman. Re-PC does resell monitors that are still in working order, but you don't have to pay them to take those off your hands.

Dan: You're the full-time paid journalist here, bucko, not us. You want to know what the city does with monitors people illegally toss into dumpsters, or leave in traffic circles? Pick up the phone, do a little legwork to check the answers you get, and then you tell us.

My guess is that the city will give you some greenwash answer, but in fact monitors tossed in dumpsters, along with the rest of the trash, get compacted, shipped out of town in railway cars, and end up in landfills, slowly leaching lead and mercury into the water table for eternity.

They might have a better procedure in place for traffic-circle CRTs.

reading...

But I agree with Dan, the prissy enviro-types who want us all to wear our vegan hairshirts are out of touch.

Charles:

Used motor oil, unlike broken CRTs, can be disposed of at a city Transfer Station.

Also, constructs like "vegan hairshirts" generally suggest, to the non-humor-impaired, that there is perhaps a wee bit of what the poets call hyperbole afoot.

A "hairshirt" is invariably some sort of animal-based byproduct.

Does any one know of any good soy-based hairshirt substitutes?

Hot afternoon.

I was getting angry at all the assholes who talk the good fight when it comes to the environment and then think old monitors are an albatross around their silly red necks.

I just paid 90.00 to empty the old moniors out of a store room - took to RE PC - yes a great place for cheap gear and geeks --- Get off the brownies Dan, you are sounding brain dead, suggesting that THERE IS SOME FREE WAY TO DISPOSAL. THERE AIN'T.......

But in 2009 a new law in Washington state takes effect. All computer sellers and makers must take back old gear free of charge at their outlets. First law of its kind in the US.

The Japanese have much better enviro laws than the USA, and are in the foreground of recycling old gear.

Love the joke about the soy hair shirt --- you do mean a classic out of bible felted dog and goat and whatever -- hair shirt? Reading the bible as a kid I could not figure what the hell this hair shirt thing was about, then it dawned at an old hippie arts and craft show - felted gear is very common to antiquity.

DO NOT THROW AWAY MONITORS, YOUR KARMA SCORES WILL SINK TO VERY LOW COUNTS......

Driving by this today, i noticed that someone had taped some sort of note to each of the monitors, but was unable to stop and read it. Little help?

Yeah, I happened by this today on my bike and found it mildly amusing. Cicled around to get another look and see what the notes said and almost got clobbered by a butch weilding a bronco. Decided to carry on before I found myself hobbling home and ruining my weekend.

What a great idea for old monitors. I'm dropping off mine today! I have a lot of them too! -Bill

Q13 did a short report on this particular traffic cirlce last night, and credited the Stranger's blog.

They did the "right" and scolded people about the proper disposal of computer monitors. See, Dan? That's the media's job. See something fun and interesting going on? Rush in and scold folks, telling them the "right," safe, proper way to do whatever it was they were doing.

The media is supposed has a role to play in building the Nanny State, Dan. Don't you see?

I refuse to feel guilty for wanting the neighborhood to be free from toxic crap. That's not being a Nanny, it's being a good neighbor who actually gives a shit about someone besides themselves.

Okay, so what are you going to do about all the cars in your neighborhood then?

Computer "terminals"? Jesus, Dan, are you still working on a TRS-80 mainframe system or something? Time to get hip with the new lingo, old man...

How many do you think will fit on the traffic island? I have a lot of them, and don't want to bring too many over from Redmond. -Bill

Hey BILLG, shove them up your ass you jerk.

@Bill,

Easily ten more, maybe even twenty if you pile them up.
Go for it! A grand laugh shall be had by all and everyone can get the serious stick out of their butts.