Most recycling places get flooded with CRT monitors, don't think you want to get stuck with those starting a recycling drive.

I could be wrong but recyclers get paid by businesses to take the stuff away, and get paid by others for the recycled parts. There is some value to the machines as scrap, you need to figure out what that is and then slightly overbid on pallate sized loads or nobody will want to bother with you.

You need to figure out a value added service like taking in dead LCD monitors fixing them and then reselling them. Most just need a few capacitors and maybe a transister or two to become working again. Setup a shop in your apartment and do upgrades for people. The local guy I get stuff from (free) has tons of people who know him dropping off free machines to refurb and sell, he freecycles whatever he doesn't want to deal with. Most he does OS, HD, video, RAM upgrades and simple spyware cleanup.

As far as being profitable, what happened to just wanting to save macs from the crusher?