Soon will be the time that stand-alone DVD recorders will be within my price range. I have a fairly good sized collection of videotapes that I have made over the past 18 years. We’re talking about 1200± tapes! I plan on transferring the majority of the tapes’ contents to DVDs. There’s a lot of stuff that, while I like it, wouldn’t necessarily buy on DVD if it were available and a lot of it will likely never be. Only my original MST3K tapes will be kept intact.
The big question is what to do with all these tapes after I transfer them. The idea of all that plastic ending up in a landfill is disturbing and I just can’t see myself throwing them away. Still, I don’t to waste storage space keeping them in boxes in a closet. So I came up with this idea: open up the tape housing, removing the reel that holds the tapes and keeping them in storage. (I have become quite adept at doing this) They’ll take substantially less room that way. I will keep a few shells as needed. This still leaves me with a ton (almost) of empty shells!
Looking at the tapes themselves, I don’t see any recycling number on them, nor do I see one on the cardboard box they came in.
I will also have a lot of full sleeve plastic cases to dispose of and they do not have recycle numbers on them either.
Does anybody have a suggestion of what to do with all this plastic? Granted, it’ll be a while before I do this, but I’d like to have a plan in place before I start.