Instead of getting rid of your old stuff, learn to make use of it and start a local business. This is what I have done. I continue to jailbreak ipods and iphones, root/unlock android devices. This allows people to have portable arcades or whatever they want in their hands. For other devices, you can take old computers and make them into arcading beast machines. Better yet, take original xboxs and softmod them. It used to be difficult, but now all you need is a cd drive (has to be cd), a blank cd, and burning software. Prior you used to have to have action replay (80+ usd now) and certain games that had exploits in them to permit you to upgrade/change the default dashboard software. This allows you to run roms for psx, gba, gbc, nes, n64, genesis and many other old consoles. On top of that you have the large collection of xbox games that cost like 1 to 5 dollars used on amazon. Once softmodded you can upgrade the hdd from the stock 8gb to anything virtually beyond that. By default you can only upgrade using other pata drives, but if you buy a 5 - 10 dollar adapter you can use sata aswell, making it possible to have 3 to 4 tb hdds. You could even theoretically use and SSD. I haven't tested this though. You should also spend the time to replace the thermal compound that is provided by default. I would suggest IC diamond or Artic Silver 5 for this. The stock compound is the shitty pad kind. With the xbox you have a really small htpc/entertainment arcade device. You can store games, photos, music, video, surf the web, watch youtube videos, etc. I havent found a working netflix script, but am looking still.
I would suggest EVOx, XBMC4Xbox, and Unleash X. I personally use XBMC4xbox, which allows for use of python scripted plugins such as Youtube and web browsers. I wouldn't suggest using such a device for secure functionality, as it is very insecure. As no one is officially supporting it for security updates. Leave it in the front or living room or bedroom and use it for games, movies, music, and the occasional in bed/on couch web browsing.
Companies like Apple are now offering discounts to recycle their old products. More thank likely what they are going to do is re-use parts from them and instead of recycling they will work it to resell them. So all in all we should be making money off of our old devices, not the other way around.