brent Why did you decide that by me recycling them it was not a 'green outcome'?
IMHO, that's the greeenest thing you could do with them. They're inefficient by today's standards, eat lots of power to keep the platters spinning, and are generally of very low capacity and low performance. By taking that out of service, you may cause someone to purchase an $18.95 SSD with 4 times the capacity, 1/4 the apetite for electricity, and requires almost no power for staying cool. And whatever their original lifespan was, much of it is probably gone already.