Dumpster dive

[magiccow]

Dave, I haven't seen you retrieve anything from the garbage room recently?  I hope you haven't been warned off by health & safety wonks.

[mxbeanie]

He's too busy packing rulers

[vk2hmc]

Dumpster diving should be a national sport here.
It seems there are also variants, such as kerbside collection crawling etc.

Personally, I have found umpteen tons of useful and not so useful computer gear but never test equipment.

[alter Ratz]

Dumpster diving should be a national sport here.
It seems there are also variants, such as kerbside collection crawling etc.

Personally, I have found umpteen tons of useful and not so useful computer gear but never test equipment.

The company I work for is relocating their offices at the moment and we will have a huge recycling room. I'm really looking forward to it and hope to be able to score some interesting stuff.

I thing Dave's dumpster videos are very inspiring in this way.

Bernhard

[zorder]

My friends looked at me as if I were a poor hobo or something whenever I picked up some stuff. Now I know I'm not the only one   

[magiccow]

Thanks for your comments.  I think it's a great idea re-using bits of electronics, especially if they're not broken at all, but simply superceded. 

At my local dump it's not allowed to take stuff away, which it seems to me is madness.  If someone wants the stuff, why throw it in a hole in the ground?

[vk2hmc]

Not recycling someone else's useful garbage is (should be) a crime.

I find if you have a quiet word to the tip manager or the site foreman, 9/10 they will look the other way.

I keep a lot of spare parts to avoid delays in repairs but I also keep a great stack of donor boards for different electronic technology periods.
Most of these boards I have scrounged from trashed equipment. Quite often, if I can't find a part I need in stock, chances are the part is on one of the boards.

Exiting on a light note, I saw a guy driving a brand new Mercedes collecting radios on the last council collection.
Sometimes its not just the monetary value - its the availability.

I have heard a lot of useful stuff now gets thrown in containers and shipped off to China for recycling.
In a way its good, as I am guessing a lot of useful equipment and parts show up on eBay ( FE 5680A for $30, anyone )
Except for the inflated prices, we normally would not have access to these items.

[hikariuk]

I find if you have a quiet word to the tip manager or the site foreman, 9/10 they will look the other way.
or the inflated prices, we normally would not have access to these items.

The tip in my town has a sign up saying taking stuff is stealing.  On the upside the people who work there decorated their little hut with stuff from the skips.

[Garywoo]

If anyone is near me, i happen to (unfortunately) throw away a large amount of working R/C toy parts, mainly transmitters. I don't think Dave would be interested in them in any case

[vk2hmc]

I find if you have a quiet word to the tip manager or the site foreman, 9/10 they will look the other way.
or the inflated prices, we normally would not have access to these items.

The tip in my town has a sign up saying taking stuff is stealing.  On the upside the people who work there decorated their little hut with stuff from the skips.

Gosh, that is really backward thinking!

For example, in Sydney, Australia, One of the radio club members got the tip guys to watch and grab him 2 identical microwave ovens.
He wanted the transformers for the HV supply in his HF linear.
He even specified the make and model!
Eventually he got a phone call and picked up the 2 matching microwaves and that linear is a step closer to completion


--marki

[lowimpedance]

 Curb side junk piles are getting less productive here since the metal recyclers have quadrupled in numbers from the occasional guys going to the effort of cutting out old CRT TV deflection coils to anything with a sniff of metal being vacuumed up before the council removes whats left, so that includes all PC gear, microwaves etc.
 Work at the moment is doing e waste cleanup and unfortunately the OH&S stick pointy end has been waved vigorously, definitely some good parts salvage and old gear going, to probably land fill.

[andtfoot]

One of the a/v product vendors we use regularly trashes brand new (discontinued) gear. Everything from intercom systems to home theatre systems get systematically taken out of their boxes and smashed with a hammer or similar. 
Apparently if they can prove to the government that the items being written off can't be used/sold, they get a significant tax refund... 

[Stonent]

As a kid I found an Atari 2600 laying in the street near someone's curb. I grabbed it. It worked except for the mode switches were snapped off. I already had an Atari so it was no big deal if I had a game that needed the mode switch.

[johansen]

One of the a/v product vendors we use regularly trashes brand new (discontinued) gear. Everything from intercom systems to home theatre systems get systematically taken out of their boxes and smashed with a hammer or similar. 
Apparently if they can prove to the government that the items being written off can't be used/sold, they get a significant tax refund... 

This seems to be standard practice for all major big box stores.

and yes, you can do the same. file a corporation for yourself, don't pay yourself anything. write off literally everything as a corporate expense and only pay income tax on the difference in cash you have from year to year.

[cengland0]

One of the a/v product vendors we use regularly trashes brand new (discontinued) gear. Everything from intercom systems to home theatre systems get systematically taken out of their boxes and smashed with a hammer or similar. 
Apparently if they can prove to the government that the items being written off can't be used/sold, they get a significant tax refund... 

When I was in the retail business, I would always smash the defective customer returns before putting them into the trash.  Last thing I wanted was someone to dig through the trash, get that item, and then attempt to return it again for another refund or exchange. 

The products I sold were store branded items so it was only sold by our retail chain.  If they brought something back without a receipt, I might just swap it out for customer goodwill anyway.  And some people think we can just ship it back to the manufacturer but that was false.  We took the loss at the individual store level.

I would love to take some of those items home with me but that could have been viewed as a conflict of interest or something.  Imagine me taking home a bunch of our merchandise.  What would the district or regional manager could think if they found out.  Could be interpreted as stealing or purposely marking things as defective to get free merchandise.

[Fryguy]

3 years ago i worked for a big company and they systematically changed the entire office computer system after 5 years use - they threw dozens of perfectly good working terminals with 24" samsung flatscreens in locked trash containers for the scrapyard ! 

Can anyone imagine how much i would enjoy it to punch them right in their f****** faces all day long ? 

Sorry if i'm a bit emotional on this - but if there is one thing i really hate - it's wasting good stuff . 

[Stonent]

3 years ago i worked for a big company and they systematically changed the entire office computer system after 5 years use - they threw dozens of perfectly good working terminals with 24" samsung flatscreens in locked trash containers for the scrapyard ! 

Can anyone imagine how much i would enjoy it to punch them right in their f****** faces all day long ? 

Sorry if i'm a bit emotional on this - but if there is one thing i really hate - it's wasting good stuff . 

I worked at a place that said they used to auction off old computers and stuff to the employees.  *used to*.. They said it was a nightmare because people would find something wrong with it and expect the IT department to fix it for free or try to get their money back.

[Fryguy]

That happens when the employees have to pay for the stuff - how about : let them take what they want for free and be happy if it's gone !

[jolshefsky]

When I was in the retail business, I would always smash the defective customer returns before putting them into the trash.  Last thing I wanted was someone to dig through the trash, get that item, and then attempt to return it again for another refund or exchange. 

Spray paint and a "scrapped" stencil never seems to cross anybody's mind.

But Capitalism totally works fine. Nothing to see here ... 

[RobbieC]

     I was just thinking that I haven't dumpsterdived in quite awhile (in an actual dumpster), but remembered that I do it all the time at work!
     We have a electronics recycling section at my work that's provided me with quite a few things over the years: hairdryers, stereos, all sorts of cables, discrete components, cell phones, plenty if wall-wart power supplies and a metric tonne of PC parts as well as PCs (many of which I've used to upgrade other employees work computers).
     I wish we were situated near other high tech companies in town; nothing builds a tight-knit industry like communal dumpster diving, =)

[mianchen]

Never dumpster dived before seeing Dave's videos. I scored 3 perfect 500G SATA III hard drives (I was about to buy some for my home made file server), 3 HP LaserJet 2600N, 2 DVRs and loads of other computer bits from someone's office clear out about a month ago. Good thing was that they did put a "Please help yourself" sign on the skip. 

[hikariuk]

The tip in my town has a sign up saying taking stuff is stealing.  On the upside the people who work there decorated their little hut with stuff from the skips.

Gosh, that is really backward thinking!

My suspicion is that they sift the skips for items they can either sell for scrap or recycle via some other revenue earning stream.  They definitely use the garden waste to make compost and then sell it back to you at £3.50 a bag.

In fact, having just checked the council website:

‘Re-users’ pay for the right to take away items brought to the centre by members of the public. Money generated from this helps to fund the cost of running the centres.

So yeah, you can take stuff if you pay for the right to do so.