So you’ve had an ATM for years, and it’s given you great service, paying for itself many times over. But now it’s getting a little long in the tooth. It looks clunky, parts are wearing out, it’s slow, and you want the security, ease of use and advanced features available with a new ATM.

Upgrading is a no-brainer. But what do you do with your faithful old machine?

An ATM is basically a computer with a safe attached. And in most parts of the country, you can’t just dump electronics in a landfill. So your choices are to resell or recycle it.

Reselling can be tricky, especially with a really old machine. Older machines might have trouble meeting current security and accessibility standards. And because ATMs are heavy, shipping costs can eat up much of the sale price.

Sometimes the company that installs your new machine is willing to take away the old one for parts. But that doesn’t usually work with the oldest models, especially ancient behemoths from Diebold or NCR that can weigh more than 600 pounds.

So most likely the ATM will be recycled. Diebold, for instance, contracts with Goodwill to dismantle, clean and recycle its machines. Their lead location (in Ohio) handles 1,800 machines a year:

In 1991, Goodwill Industries of Wayne and Holmes Counties entered into a contract with Diebold, Incorporated, an international manufacturer of ATMs, electronic voting machines and security products based in North Canton. The work included dismantling ATMs, recycling the metals, sending back certain parts to be disposed of by certified recyclers, and rendering the safes useless.

Last year alone, 30 employees and job trainees at the Wooster Goodwill took apart some 1,800 ATMs. It’s a painstaking process that can take anywhere from one to seven hours, depending upon the size of the machine. Workers must separate all the metals – sheet metal, stainless steel, aluminum and two kinds of iron. Goodwill then sells the metals to a scrap recycler for profit.

Seven years after being awarded the Diebold contract, (Goodwill) approached Diebold to see if the Wooster agency could also take on servicing and rebuilding work.

The Goodwill eventually earned another contract to service the ATM interiors and pneumatic tubes.

… In April 2003, (Goodwill) learned Diebold was considering outsourcing ATM dismantling to cut down on the costs of transporting the machines to Ohio.

(Diebold asked if) Goodwills across the country could replicate the ATM dismantling that Goodwill of Wayne and Holmes County already was doing. “We realized these people were very conscientious about what they were doing,” she says. “Also, by using Goodwill, we’re helping the community.”

Today Goodwills in Macon, GA; Sacramento, CA; San Antonio, TX; Springfield, MA; and Honolulu, HI, are providing ATM contract services to Diebold.

Many manufacturers of ATM surrounds and kiosks have recycling programs, too.

Just be sure to clean out the machine before sending it off to be recycled:

Six employees at a Fond du Lac scrap metal company got more than they bargained for when they tore apart an old automated teller machine and found more than $34,000 in cash.

The money, all $20 bills, floated to the ground as the machine was sheared in half on a 6-foot hoist at Sadoff Iron & Metal, said Tom Knippel, the firm’s industrial marketing manager.

Sadoff Iron processes scrap metal to be melted at a foundry or steel mill. The ATM was one of about 250 shipped to Sadoff on Jan. 15 for that purpose.

“They were getting down to the last of the machines,” Knippel said. “They cut this one in half and out came a large stack of $20s.”

ATMs are popping up everywhere, even in high schools — which turn out to have their own unique issues regarding cash machines. From Granite Bay, California (a suburb of Sacramento):

The days of fast cash at Granite Bay High School appear to be over – at least for now.

A student ATM machine that had been in place since the beginning of the school year was removed from service this week, officials said, ending an experiment that created plenty of campus buzz.

The novel option of cash withdrawals at school marked a first for the high school district, which had hoped the pilot program would spur an increase in food sales.

“I wanted to provide an opportunity for kids who forgot their lunch money, where it wouldn’t stop them from getting lunch or getting pencils at the student store,” said Jay Brown, the district’s director of food services, which purchased the machine for $2,500.

The article’s a little misleading — the machine was taken out of service because of a defective motherboard, not because the experiment was a failure. But there were some issues.

The machine averaged just two transactions a day, and suffered from a bit of an image problem. Some parents worried the machine could used to pay for contraband, invite harassment and hinder proper money-management skills among those just learning to handle finances for the first time.

That last concern is overblown. Using an ATM is *part* of learning money-management skills. And if parents are worried about their kids using debit cards responsibly, then they shouldn’t let their kids *have* debit cards. Without a cash card, an ATM is just a high-tech doorstop. The fact that the machine averaged just two transactions a day demonstrates that kids weren’t using it carelessly.

Nonetheless, the district took steps to head off such problems. Each student could make only one withdrawal a day, for a maximum of $40. And the machine was only available at lunchtime (it was wheeled out on a dolly), when it was subject to intense staff supervision.

Students had mixed opinions about the ATM.

“I can’t think of a reason why you might need it,” said junior Shannon Wagner, who also expressed concern over the cost of fees.

But student Rachel Smyth said she could imagine it coming in handy “if it was an emergency and I didn’t have any cash.”

Brown said he’s still exploring how to give students the convenience of access to their money in a way that would make all sides happy. That could include a device that recharges student food accounts without disbursing cash, as well as a system free of service charges.

“There were students who really appreciated having the ATM there,” he said. “You can imagine if you forgot your money and you end up needing a notebook or a school lunch.”

Granite Bay isn’t the first high school to install an ATM — the story mentions successful deployments in California, Oregon and Washington, and a 2004 survey by Teen Research found a tiny but measurable fraction of kids age 12-15 had access to an ATM at school. That number can only have grown since then.

There’s a reason for all this: High school students increasingly control their own cash and bank accounts. The story mentions a recent survey by credit-card issuer Capital One that found that 73 percent of high school seniors have checking accounts, many of them linked to debit cards, most of them funded by the students’ after-school jobs. And when they need to buy something at school — lunch, supplies, field-trip money — they often need the cash immediately.

So expect to see more cash machines or other value dispensers appearing in educational settings.