New York youth learns not to mix money and electronics

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Last updated April 12, 2019

Very little can usually go wrong with a recycling effort.  Deciding to recycle cell phones and other electronics is a laudable act that helps to conserve precious resources.  As such, it is regarded as a green activity that we should all engage in.

However, recycling electronics must be done with a little bit of care, as a New York family has learned.  The Becker family recently took some old, unused computers to a recycling center.  Normally, this would pose no sort of problem at all.  In this case, however, the son of the family had been using his old computer tower as a piggy bank of sorts.  Inside it, he had squirreled away not just the $300 in cash he had accumulated, but also some gift cards and a precious photograph of himself riding a roller coaster that reaches up to 80 miles per hour.

Max Becker’s mother supports recycling not only because it is right for the planet, but also because she feels it helps to clean up her home environment as well.  “Any little thing hanging around, I want out,” commented Dorothy Ferrante on the topic.  “We’re a big recycling family. Every scrap.”

Max, however, was not pleased to return home from school and find that his computer tower had gone missing.  The contents were eventually recovered by recycling workers, but the story stands as a reminder not to store goods inside the cases of recyclable electronics.