The state of Arkansas has teamed up with Unicor (a federal prisons contractor) to implement Project Green-Fed, available free of charge to residents of Arkansas. You inform Unicor of the equipment you have to recycle, they Fed-ex you prepaid shipping cartons, you fill the cartons and call Fed-ex, who ships the items to a federal prison in Texarkana.  Here, prisoners disassemble and recycle components from your equipment.

I requested cartons from Unicor in January, and they recently arrived here (in mid-February).  I have just filled them with a non-functioning monitor, printer, and various other items.  I am now awaiting a pickup from Fed-ex.  Without this service, I would have had to pay a $15 fee to my county waste transfer station to dispose of the monitor (by state law).

When the program started, it was a 6 month pilot-program for the state of Arkansas only.  I now see from the Unicor web site that this project has been so successful that it is going to be expanded nationwide.  Kudos to those involved in this project, as we need viable alternatives to disposing of obsolete electronics in landfills and ditches across the country.