By Chris Soble
If you are planning on moving, or just feel the need to lighten the load, then spring is an excellent time to reach a decision on what to do with all your extra stuff.
The first Giveaway Weekend of the year in Winnipeg is being held from Saturday to Sunday, May 13-14. This is an excellent way to up-cycle the things you don’t want anymore to others who may have a use for it. Just place your unwanted items at the curb and mark as “free”.
Perhaps now is also the time to finally get rid of that bulky stereo stuff that has been taking up space for so long. Did you know that Saving Audio Recycling will pick it up for free? No need to walk it to the curb and watch it sit there all weekend in the rain before walking it back into your house at the end of the weekend. Saving Audio offers you a much better solution for your once much-loved electronics.
A convenient world of music is now so easily available to us through our headphones and bluetooth speakers it often means that the old AM/FM amplifier, record player and speakers just don’t get used any longer or just take up space.
Maybe they’ve been sitting around for years and don’t function properly anymore, or need fixing and the repair costs are too high. Perhaps it’s a matter of being able to find a meaningful place which would ensure best use of them instead of being smashed up at a recycling depot or buried at Brady Landfill. These items were enjoyed by you in the past and maybe now is the time for someone else to do the same.
Saving Audio Recycling is an entirely volunteer grass roots environmental organization comprised of life-long stereo electronics enthusiasts and technicians with a ‘Keep it Local’ philosphy who assist members of the public in ethically disposing of their unwanted audio electronics.
Saving Audio assists only locally created not-for-profit organizations such as the Manitoba Electrical Museum, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and Equal Opportunities West. By sending your stereo stuff to Saving Audio, you support multiple organizations who do beneficial community work in Winnipeg.
Those who find out about what Saving Audio does are delighted and wish they’d known about them sooner. Recycling has become part of our modern lifestyle and yet the re-use of items is recycling’s highest art form. Thanks to the volunteers at Saving Audio, who have the expertise, experience and diagnostic equipment to bring the old back into new useable condition, each piece of stereo equipment received is either fixed up, or has parts saved to help get something else up and running again in the future. Recycling occurs as the last step and only when neccessary. Repaired items are then donated to local not for profit organizations.
The local organizations who receive these items simply love them because they know that they’ve been properly looked over and can be safely offered again to the public.
At one of Saving Audio’s community collection events, a retired school teacher stated that they have to keep doing what they’re doing because it is so neccessary. If you feel the same way, and have some stereo equipment you no longer need, then contacting Saving Audio Recycling is a great option.
Saving Audio will accept amplifiers, loudspeakers, record players/turntables, AM/FM receivers and tuners, reel to reel or cassette tape decks, CD or MP3 players and “Walkmans”, AM/FM/Shortwave radios, audio mixers, equalizers, microphones, headphones, processors, boomboxes/“ghetto blasters”, musical instrument amplifiers, cables, audio component parts (such as switches, capacitors, transformers, vacuum tubes, test equipment), media such as audio cassettes, reel to reel tape, records/LPs, CDs, test equipment . . . and even DIY homemade audio projects!
You can find a home for it all by calling Saving Audio Recycling at 204-257-7575 and a volunteer will arrange a time with you to come pick things up. Free drop-off is also available.
For more info, visit their website at www.savingaudiorecycling.ca