Most metropolitan areas will have scrap salvage yards somewhere.

In my neighborhood, such things as appliances can be put on the curb. They almost never get picked up by the city. People in pickup trucks go through the neighborhood before the city gets there and gets stuff like that. That's the easiest way to deal with a small item.

Where I live we can recycle that at the nearby waste transfer station.

There's a lot of copper in there

lamp? That's what I would try to do.

According to the law, The freon is supposed to be evacuated by someone with a card issued by the EPA and the unit tagged by this qualified person. This applies, I believe, if the unit was charged with R22.

know it. Ha, I bet my neighbor one time that people would end up taking stuff out of the alley (instead of the trash bins, stuff was metal junk of sorts, and the bet was a 12 pack of beer), and it was gone within the hour!
I didn't make the neighbor give me the 12 pack. I just knew what the junk people wanted, driving up and down the alleys all day.

They’ll take metal off anything. If you place a piece of furniture out hoping it will go to go use you have to post in on Craig’s list so it will go before the junkers rip the hinges off.

They break out glass of old TVs for whatever is in them. So any old TVs end up a huge mess.

I had a new large hot water heater installed in my building. One guy asked if he could have my brand new $3500 dollar shrink wrapped hot water heater. Lol. They were swarming like sharks. The plumber had a buddy that hung around for the old hw heaters. That was his job.

that some of the components are valuable in some manner, metals of some sort)...but, I haven't seen any old TVs lately, I guess that they all have been sucked up/absorbed by the salvage guys/gals. If I do see any (and if the TVs are small enough), I'll put into the dumpsters before the salvage guys get to the TVs and make a mess, busting them apart.

takes electric/electronic recycling. they took an old vacuum cleaner, phones, lamps, cfl bulbs, windows Me desktop, damaged extension cords, electric motors from work that I did not want to put in the dumpster. their website can tell you more.