Recycle it? No.. Fix it!
Back in the days we (the company I worked) had a lot of failing LCD monitors. The main problem was high voltage circuit for the back-light. The company did not wanted to mess with this problem, because the monitor costs cheaper than a fix 
So I got a pile of the monitors that has no back-light (they were on the way to the recycling). I was allowed to do with them anything I wanted. I decided to “upgrade” one
On the first try a made “always-on” back-light version. I did not realize that monitor switches back-light quite often. When it is not switched you see the white screen 
So the second version has born. It was not bright as native back-light but it was perfect for the command shell monitor
Some photos from the build:
