I read an article on CNN a few months ago about a company that pays you money to recycle your old electronics. On Gazelle.com you can get quotes for your old electronic junk that just lies around in a drawer or a closet. They make money by reselling the electronics that are still usable, but they'll also responsibly recycle things that are long gone.

I recently recycled two ancient cell phones and my old HP IPAQ pda. The two cell phones were from Sprint, and were pretty beat up anyways. I sent them to Gazelle for recycling even though they weren't worth anything. My HP pda though, was worth a whopping $11! At first I was a bit bummed, since back in 2002 it cost $250! But that's the nature of electronics though. I thought about keeping it around, but realized that it was pretty much a useless device. The IPAQ is bigger than my iPhone, had a battery life of about 2 hours, and has no wifi or internet connection of any kind.

Anyways, I think I could have gotten maybe $25 through eBay, but Gazelle was just a nice no-hassle way to get rid of the items and not have to pay eBay fees or shipping. In fact, once I submitted my list of the items I was going to send them, they emailed me a pre-paid UPS label that I printed out and stuck on the shipping box.

Plus, it's good knowing that this is a company that wants to be green, the promise here is that my old electronics won't end up in some landfill, which is probably what would eventually happen if I just hung on to them myself.

One more public service announcement: Bestbuy now accepts and recycles your old electronic gadgets for free.