"If our residents are more digitally savvy, hopefully they will be more productive, live better lives and feel like the city contributed to that happening for them," says CIO Otto Doll. "If one of the people who gets the machine ends up starting a business, we want that business to be in Minneapolis. We want them to feel this is ."

Donating the equipment doesn't cost the city, or Unisys, any more than sending it to a recycling facility, says Jeff Wilke, the Unisys program executive who manages the Minneapolis account.

"Our processes that we follow in the disposal of the equipment didn't change," Wilke says. Before turning over the computers, Unisys employees wipe the hard drives as a security measure, as stipulated in the city's contract.

Twenty-five states have electronic waste recycling laws, according to the National Center for Electronics Recycling. Most require manufacturers to take back equipment or pay for recycling; some also ban e-waste from landfills. Yet in 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only 40 percent of computers that were ready to be replaced, as measured by weight, were recycled.

Minneapolis doesn't calculate how its program affects its carbon footprint. Neither does Sappi Fine Paper North America. The manufacturer donates e-waste from four locations in Maine and its Boston headquarters to eWaste Alternatives, which employs people with disabilities to refurbish the machines for use by low-income families, schools and nonprofits.