This does, however, make me wonder if there's a way to (ab)use the charitable deductions system to make it a zero cost thing. Spun right, I can see a lot of people (myself included) find donating it for free to be a more satisfying idea than paying to throw it away, provided it's a minimally irritating process (remember that in both cases you're competing against "put off throwing it out for another month/year").
As a good example, some friends of mine who work in a networking team will turn up with a land rover and collect whatever pile of old computer equipment you have; they aggregate it and sell it to scrap merchants and the proceeds go towards drinks at their office christmas party. Their management have concluded the fuel costs are less than the recovered beer costs, and I know I can reliably get rid of old tech I don't need and even if it doesn't go to a charity as such it's going to buy beer for people I know and like.
The point here is that making it almost entirely free of effort on my part, plus at least the illusion that the money raised is going for something I consider to be of at least marginally more than zero value, makes it a proposition I'm quite happy to work with.
Or: Find a way to make people feel at least a little good about making as little effort as possible; the marginal value of a slight good feeling to me is far more than $10 especially if the $10 requires more effort to get.
As a good example, some friends of mine who work in a networking team will turn up with a land rover and collect whatever pile of old computer equipment you have; they aggregate it and sell it to scrap merchants and the proceeds go towards drinks at their office christmas party. Their management have concluded the fuel costs are less than the recovered beer costs, and I know I can reliably get rid of old tech I don't need and even if it doesn't go to a charity as such it's going to buy beer for people I know and like.
The point here is that making it almost entirely free of effort on my part, plus at least the illusion that the money raised is going for something I consider to be of at least marginally more than zero value, makes it a proposition I'm quite happy to work with.
Or: Find a way to make people feel at least a little good about making as little effort as possible; the marginal value of a slight good feeling to me is far more than $10 especially if the $10 requires more effort to get.