recyclemac

The Monday Clinic is always busy these days.

It’s been awhile but I wanted to bring all our readers and supporters up-to-date on how things are going at the MacRecycleClinic. As you’ve read in past blog posts, it took about two years for the MRC to move from being a part of Washington Apple Pi to become a 501(c)3 non-profit and to find a new home.

Our space at Marvin Memorial United Methodist Church is already crowded but has become perfect for our needs. We have workspace for our donations and to refurbish computers that will ultimately find their way back into the community. We have a “clinic space” in Room 204 at Marvin where we hold our Monday clinics.  And we have taken some space downstairs at the church to create a storage space and more importantly – a Mac Lab for use by students from Blair High School and the community. It should be ready to go on-line soon.

I’ll have to say it took awhile for folks to learn that we were “back in business” but I’m thrilled to report that most Mondays we are busy – a good thing! We want to help Mac owners get the most out of their machines – whether it means replacing or repairing a hard drive, adding memory, installing software or just doing some troubleshooting.

But our bread and butter is taking newer PowerPC G4 and G5 computers (and hopefully Intels soon), refurbishing them and then returning them back to the community. We continue to take donations and have worked out an agreement with Montgomery County to scavenge Macs that have been sent for recycling to the Shady Grove Transfer Station.

In just the past few months we’ve reached out to a number of Washington Area groups, as well as Blair and Northwood High Schools. We have given computers to families and students and we are starting to get more calls for donations as well. In all cases we look for referrals from organizations – non profits, schools and other groups are in the best situation to know who would benefit most from a computer. In all cases, we are happy to work with these groups and get these computers out the door. In some cases we can also provide a printer – though basic printers these days are very inexpensive (and you can find them at Goodwill and other thrift stores).

If your organization would be interested in creating a Macintosh Lab we can also likely help with that so please let us know.  All our contact information is right here on recyclmac or you can go to our MacRecycleClinic home page for more information.

MacRecycleClinic is a small non profit trying to help the ecology by recycling Macintosh computers. For companies like Apple, this kind of effort should be welcomed (they do have their own recycling program in fact) because a student who uses a Mac now could well become a customer in the future. And everything we can do to keep these machines serving productive lives for a few more years is a worthwhile endeavor. These machines can surf the web, send and receive email and help find jobs, fill out resumes and create term papers. We do appreciate your support as we work on this effort – something our members have felt passionate about for decades.