I'm familiar with "green" recycling centers (and Apple's program), but that seems unsatisfying. I often have computers just a generation or two old that don't need recycled, they just need reused. (I'm guessing, in these cases, the for-profit recyclers just sell them?) Having an efficient way to transfer technology to those who need and can't afford it would be nice. I'm sure such programs exist, but I'm guessing a lot of people dont know where/how to tap into them. Do you?

Of course, part of the reason we let our computers and phones rot in our drawers is also because of privacy--we don't know how to effectively clean them. How do we fix this?

I work at a web hosting company and we ran into this same problem on a massive scale. I ended up making a partnership with a local non-profit that does computer education for under privileged and adults lacking computer skills called "Information technology empowerment center". It worked out pretty well for us and we gave them about 200 machines. Maybe there is a non-profit locally that you can help?

If these are Macs you're talking about then I would boot from a USB stick, run Disk Utility, and use the secure-wipe function built into it.

If you're going to be donating the machines afterwards then it sounds like you could probably get some high school students or Boy/Girl Scouts in to do the actual work as a service project.