Ever wonder what to do with a landline telephone or a cordless phone when it no longer works? There really isn't a market for donating them to charity, reselling them or listing them online to give away; if the phone doesn't work, nobody can benefit from it. But the phone and its components are recyclable. Best Buy accepts any type of landline phone for recycling. Just bring it to the store, and they'll accept it for free, regardless of if you bought it there.

If you've ever had something shipped to you that needed to stay frozen or icy cold, it probably came with frozen gel packs. The blue liquid "gel" inside the packs can be kept frozen, and the packs can be reused over and over again in a cooler for your picnic, for example. But if you want to get rid of the packs, go ahead and let them thaw. Open the packets with scissors, and let the liquid go down the drain. It's completely nontoxic. The empty plastic pouches can be recycled with plastic shopping bags at grocery stores.

There was a time when the fax machine was one of the most technologically advanced pieces of equipment you could own. Those days are long gone, but many of us still have that clunky machine gathering dust. Take your fax machine to any Staples store, which will accept it for free and recycle it. Your old fax will get stripped apart, and the recyclable parts will be kept out of landfills. No Staples near you? No problem: Find out when your local e-waste recycling day is, and drop it off there.