Obsolete media is the hardest thing in the house to give away, and the advice online is mostly out of date. Some thrift stores still sell VHS and some have stopped. Libraries want current DVDs and not much else. And VHS tapes cannot simply go in the bin, because the magnetic tape inside is not ordinary household waste. This page covers who still accepts what, and the recycling routes for the rest.
Goodwill accepts media including DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, and Blu-ray at many locations, and the Salvation Army takes them at some, though branches have been phasing VHS out of their stores. That is the whole situation in one sentence: policy is local and changing, so the call before the trip is not optional for tapes. DVDs and CDs remain widely accepted and still sell. Bring discs in their cases; a loose disc without a case is usually discarded.
Public libraries take DVD donations and sell most of them through Friends of the Library sales rather than shelving them, the same way they handle books. Some still circulate DVDs and will add current, popular titles. Schools, daycares, and nursing homes occasionally want family films and educational VHS if they still have players, which fewer do every year. Senior residences and memory care programs are the most likely to use VHS, because the equipment is familiar to residents. Every one of these is an ask-first destination.
Independent used bookstores and media shops buy or accept CDs, DVDs, vinyl, and sometimes VHS for resale, and specialist buyers exist for horror, cult, and out-of-print VHS titles that collectors want. If your collection includes anything unusual, a search on the title before donating is worth the minute, because a rare tape is worth more sold with the proceeds given than dropped in a box.
Magazines have almost no resale value and libraries generally decline them, but two destinations use them. Doctors' offices, salons, and waiting rooms take current issues. Schools, creative reuse centers, and art programs take old magazines for collage and craft projects, and they prefer the ones nobody else wants: National Geographic, fashion titles, anything with strong images. Everything else is paper recycling. Love Packages, which ships Christian literature abroad, accepts devotionals and magazines from Christian publishers but explicitly declines Guideposts.
The plastic shell is recyclable, but the magnetic tape inside contains metals that require e-waste handling, which is why curbside programs do not take tapes and why they should not go in household trash. Best Buy does not accept VHS for recycling. The realistic options are mail-in: GreenDisk takes videotapes, CDs, and other media through prepaid boxes, and TerraCycle sells a zero-waste box for tapes and cassettes. Both cost money, in the region of one to one and a half hundred dollars for a large box, which makes them worth it for a collection and not for six tapes. Local e-waste collection events are the free alternative; search your ZIP on a recycling locator for the next one.
Scratched discs, burned discs, and software CDs have no donation value. They are recyclable through the same mail-in programs as tapes, and some office supply stores accept small quantities of media for recycling. Jewel cases are #6 polystyrene and are accepted by some programs separately. Do not put discs in curbside recycling, where they contaminate the paper and plastic streams.
Last updated September 2026. Errors: [email protected]
Thrift stores sell what shoppers buy, and the VHS shelf has been shrinking for a decade. A store that took tapes two years ago may now put them straight into the waste stream, not out of policy but because the last ones did not sell. That is why every list of places to donate VHS goes stale, and why a phone call beats any article, including this one, on the specific question of your nearest store this month.
Media usually leaves the house alongside books, which have far more destinations: library sales, drop boxes, prison programs, and Books For Africa, all covered in where to donate books near me. Bibles and Christian literature have their own programs, in where to donate Bibles. Sort media from books before you pack, because a box with tapes on top is more likely to be refused whole.