From the 1970s to the early 2000s, tape cassettes flooded living room entertainment centers and cars everywhere. Cassettes had become the most popular way to watch movies, listen to music, and record home videos before being overtaken by CDs and DVDs. Now that cassettes are no longer being developed or supported, you may be left wondering what to do with your old tape cassettes. No matter their purpose, or lack thereof, there are ways to rid your home of the pesky plastic cases.
Recycling Tape Cassettes
Tape cassettes are extremely difficult to dispose of because of the type of plastic that composes the shell. The film should never be thrown away as it has metals that shouldn’t sit in landfills. If you can’t throw out tapes, then recycling is the right thing to do—so how do you recycle tapes? Don’t just throw them in your recycling bin. You need to take any tape cassettes you want to get recycled to a specialty digital recycling center that will accept cassettes. There isn’t much value in any of the materials of a tape cassette, meaning you will likely have to pay to recycle them. It’s worth paying a fee to keep cassette tapes out of landfills.
Donate or Resell Your Cassettes
There are plenty of people who collect cassette tapes or still use cassette players for music. If you own music cassette tapes, consider donating them to a resale shop, library, or even an antique store. You might be able to get some money for authentic, rare cassette tapes. Value them online before donating or selling. Because cassette tapes are such a niche market, you may have exactly what someone is looking for.
Use Tape Cassettes in DIY Projects
Recycled materials in DIY projects offer an environmentally friendly way to create new household objects or clothing accessories. Tape cassettes can be picked apart and used for many types of DIY projects, like film-decorated purses or trinket boxes made from cassettes. Some crafters can even make belt buckles out of cassettes.
Digitize Your Tape Cassettes
Before you begin the process of figuring out what to do with your old tape cassettes, digitize them. When executed by a professional digitization company like DiJiFi, the cassette and tape return to you undamaged. A digital copy of your favorite tape cassette is far easier to preserve and takes up less space. DiJiFi can also digitize microcassette tapes that were used for personal consumer recorders and answering machines.
Contact DiJiFi today and let us help with the digitization of your tape cassettes.
