If you wonder what all the fuss is about computers, then National Computing Day on Friday 4 October 2002, is the day for you. You can also learn how to do you bit for the environment and charity.

Computeractive is organising the day which coincides with the start of our show at the National Hall in Olympia, London, from 4-6 October. While we will have many activities over the three days of the show, the main aim of National Computing Day is to make computing more accessible to everyone across the UK.We want to raise awareness of the digital divide and also show how addressing this can help solve environmental problems caused by obsolete computer equipment. Every year in the UK 1.5 million computers are dumped in landfill sites but forthcoming EU legislation could affect how old equipment is disposed of in future.

A further 1.5 million PCs are kept in storage and not put to any use at all. By redistributing this equipment to schools and retirement homes we can all do our bit to ensure that everyone could have access to computing, while reducing stockpiles of discarded computers at the same time.