Jim Jurica
The iPad has made media consumption a feather-light experience: Who needs discs when you can store and play back all your movies and songs on the 680-gram device? Here's what to do with the piles of CDs, DVDs and yes, even eight-tracks you've accumulated over the years.
Swap
It seems too good to be true: trade in your piles of old CDs and DVDs for a shiny new iPad. But iPodMeister.com's offer is the real deal - if you send 600 discs to New York-based company, it will send you a 16 GB iPad in return. Bump it up to 1,150 discs and you can score a 64 GB iPad 3G. If you want to avoid customs, you can request an international money order instead and just buy one yourself (or whatever else you want).
For those with smaller collections (starting at 220 discs) you can still get other products, such as an iPod Nano, iPhone or external hard drive.
The company can also digitize your CDs and send you a DVD full of MP3s in addition to your free device - though you'll have to trade in a few more discs for this service.
What does it do with these towers of discs? "We find a new home for them with somebody who will appreciate your music as much as you did when you bought the CDs," the business owners say on their site.
Before you hastily send your dust-covered discs away, make sure they meet the company's criteria: They must be in their original jewel cases with complete cover art included. In short, don't bother sending in your CD wallet filled with 99-cent bootlegs.
Sell
Never doubt that your trash - Boy George's complete discography, for example - could be someone else's treasure.
Naomi Mihilewicz, information and outreach co-ordinator at the Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council in Saskatoon, recommends you try to sell your used media to a willing recipient before donating them to a charity, where they might end up in the trash.
"We usually suggest posting it on something like Kijiji … so if somebody's truly interested in it, they can take it," she says. Just be realistic: Don't expect more than a buck or two for Savage Garden's last album.
Donate
If you've tried and failed to sell your extensive Disney DVD set on Craigslist, donate it. Some libraries, such as the Vancouver Public Library, accept current DVDs and CDs in good condition to add to their collections.
Barbara Engelbart, a spokeswoman for Edmonton-based Goodwill Industries of Alberta, says her organization accepts all media formats. "We receive everything from albums to eight-tracks to Blu-rays to VHS. I've even seen one or two Betas coming through."
What can't be sold in stores is put on Amazon.ca and the leftovers go to the "salvage operation" where, if possible, they're recycled.
But make sure you sort before you send, Ms. Engelbart says.
"If it doesn't have a case or isn't identifiable or if it's burnt, that's stuff we can't sell."
Recycle
If you want to be certain your old media stays out of a landfill, take it to a recycling drop-off centre.
London Drugs in Western Canada accepts CDs, DVDs, floppy disks and cassette tapes; Future Shop accepts CDs; and Best Buy accepts CDs and DVDs.
The items dropped off at the two latter retailers are sent to Cambridge, Ont.-based Greentec International, a company that specializes in collecting and recycling e-waste. The products are separated into streams for each media type, bulked down to reduce their size and sent through a grinder or shredder. From there, they're sent down a stream to a plastics recycler.
While it accepts all media formats, Tony Perrotta, the company's president and chief executive officer, says older ones - which are often made of multiple materials - are much more expensive to process.
"We don't go out and market that we want VHS tapes, but we know they're going to come in," he says.
And don't do this: Throw them in the trash when you have so many other options.