Keeping e-waste out of landfills
Then there's the fact that this stuff is pretty easily broken.
How to dispose of broken or outdated electronic devices has become a growing question.
A year-old startup, BuyMyTronics.com, thinks it has an equitable and environmentally friendly solution: It will buy anyone's used, new and broken devices. It will fix what's fixable and sell it at profit. The rest gets recycled.
"Everybody has something they [just don't know what to do with]. It's happened to me before. I broke a digital camera, and when I looked for a place to have it fixed, it was going to be more to fix it than it was to buy a brand new one," said Brett Mosley, president and CEO of BuyMyTronics.com.
Although many people have found themselves in a similar position, holding a worthless device because it is broken or out-of-date, Mosley decided he would do something about it.
"I'd always had that idea that it would be cool if you could buy things from people at a reasonable price and then have all of your labor and repairs done in-house. You could sell them. It was always something I had been frustrated with and said, 'someone should do something about this.' The opportunity presented itself and I seized the day," he said.