The Time Has Come: Ideas For Recycling & Reusing Your Old VHS Tapes

Few things scream "pre-2000" louder than VHS tapes. In the age of Netflix, it's hard to believe that we ever got such a thrill out of collecting these clunky little contraptions. But collect we did. And unless you still have a functioning VCR player (I feel old just typing these words), chances are you have a tall pile of now-obsolete tapes on your hands.

A quick scan through my local recycling rules shows that VHS tapes cannot be recycled in my area, and I expect it's the same for you. In most places, they fall under the category of electronic waste, which is notoriously tricky to dispose of responsibly.

As David Beschen, the CEO of e-waste recycler Greendisk previously told mbg, recycling these items requires breaking them down into their constituent parts (in the case of VHS tapes: a plastic outer shell and a multilayer magnetic film), which can then be resold to suppliers who incorporate these parts into something new. The tricky thing is that in order for this process to make sense financially to a recycler, they'll need a lot of materials.

So, where does that leave those of us who have tons of these tapes at home and no way to use them? That's the question I posed to Tracy McCubbin—a professional organizer who takes an eco-minded approach to decluttering.

Whenever she works with clients who have tons of old VHS tapes (pretty often, it turns out), the first thing she has them do is separate them into two piles: Home videos and commercial tapes of movies, shows, etc.

Home videos can be brought into the 21st century and digitized through services like Costco or LegacyBox. That second category, however, can be resold—and you might be surprised by how much money you can get for them. "Interestingly, there's a little bit of a market for the produced tapes right now," says McCubbin, who notes that they've become a collectors’ item for those who still have working VCR players, even though these officially stopped being sold back in 2016.

I believed it when I saw it. I spotted a VHS tape of the '90s kid classic Air Bud during a recent trip to my local vintage shop, and a scroll through eBay revealed that some people are willing to pay upward of $100 for untouched VHS tapes of classic movies like Air Bud.

While ideally, you'll be able to keep these tapes in use, sometimes it's just not in the cards and you do need to recycle them.

If that's the case, you have a few options: First, look to see if your city or town has an e-waste collection drop-off zone by scanning this database. You'll likely find that there is either a local store that accepts drop-offs or an occasional disposal event that you can attend. If you go this route, McCubbin recommends using it as an opportunity to get rid of all the old electronics you have lying around the house. Just make sure to wipe things like laptops and cellphones first in case they have any sensitive information on them.

You can also look into companies that offer bulk recycling services for a fee, such as GreenDisk and TerraCycle. For $60 to $130, they'll send you a box to fill with various types of electronics and disks to send back to them, overcoming barriers of volume and cost. While the price tag is a bit steep for some old hunks of plastic, McCubbin adds that you can split a box with friends and neighbors to bring the cost down and help everyone clear out clutter responsibly.