Just try to establish relationships with people who will sell you old gear on the cheap. Believe it or not, a lot of people just want to get rid of this stuff and if you can have some sort of mutal understanding that snags you resalable stuff, that's great.
Being a computer recycler may or may not work out, particularly since you have found others in your area. Running a recycling drive is almost certainly a bad idea. As Unknown_K pointed out, you will get a bunch of toxic waste that people will want to dump on you (while they're busy selling the salable bits).