General > General Technical Chat
Does your corporation throw away useful stuff? How often and how much?
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SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on May 25, 2020, 12:51:18 pm ---BTW, I get asked many times about the legality of me taking stuff from the dumpster. Yes, it's legal. The dumpster is on private property (partly owned by me BTW), does not fall under council regulations, and it's actually against the strata policy (and collection company policy) for office owners to dump anything other than regular office waste into the dumpster room. No electrical stuff or furniture etc allowed.

--- End quote ---

If I understand correctly, office owners dumping electrical gear is per se not allowed. Your getting ahold of some of it actually helps the collection company not to have to deal with it.

Still wondering whether some office owner could not one day get you in trouble if you ever get ahold of anything (like computers) that could contain confidential information (although obviously if some company trashes stuff with confidential information, they would be pretty dumb.)
vk6zgo:
Back when I worked at a TV Studio, 75 ohm terminations were "at a premium".
We used a large number of them, & we were always battling to find enough for any given job.

We were getting rid of a bunch of stuff, & as part of our "corporate good citizen" policy, we laid them out on tables & invited the local hams to dig through them, prior to disposing of them.
As a ham myself, I had a look before they were scheduled to arrive.

I was surprised to see that virtually all the stuff still had the terminations on them.
I got a reasonably sized cardboard box & half filled it with terminations which went straight back into service!

I found many other occasions to repurpose really good quality parts from redundant equipment, within the company.

It was often far more economical to dig through the forgotten parts for some long gone equipment & find a part which could be used somewhere else, rather than go down the rabbithole of trying to obtain the "correct" part from a supplier on the other side of the globe!

After all, I was being paid for my technical skills, not my skills as a purchasing clerk!

Of course, that sort of thing would be frowned on today by the "suits".




olkipukki:

--- Quote from: Warhawk on May 23, 2020, 12:29:48 pm ---My corporation (+30k employees)

Am I wrong?

--- End quote ---
Yes and No.


--- Quote from: Warhawk on May 23, 2020, 12:29:48 pm ---... I would love to see local hackerspaces, universities, or fellow hobbyists using it.

--- End quote ---
...and your corporation would "love" to see headlines such as "Warhawk Corporation donated toxic equipments with dangerous lead metals to our local university students"  ;D



--- Quote from: Warhawk on May 23, 2020, 12:29:48 pm ---What to I miss?

--- End quote ---
Yes, you do, in short - "liability.legal.insurance."
TimFox:
I remember a problem decades ago when the University of Illinois (IIRC) obtained some surplus heavy-duty transformers and used them in a student project.  Unfortunately, the transformers contained PCBs, as this was shortly after they were banned.
james_s:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on May 25, 2020, 03:34:39 pm ---Back when I worked at a TV Studio, 75 ohm terminations were "at a premium".
We used a large number of them, & we were always battling to find enough for any given job.

We were getting rid of a bunch of stuff, & as part of our "corporate good citizen" policy, we laid them out on tables & invited the local hams to dig through them, prior to disposing of them.
As a ham myself, I had a look before they were scheduled to arrive.

I was surprised to see that virtually all the stuff still had the terminations on them.
I got a reasonably sized cardboard box & half filled it with terminations which went straight back into service!

I found many other occasions to repurpose really good quality parts from redundant equipment, within the company.

It was often far more economical to dig through the forgotten parts for some long gone equipment & find a part which could be used somewhere else, rather than go down the rabbithole of trying to obtain the "correct" part from a supplier on the other side of the globe!

After all, I was being paid for my technical skills, not my skills as a purchasing clerk!

Of course, that sort of thing would be frowned on today by the "suits".

--- End quote ---


I've seen quite often one department is throwing away things while another department is buying more of those same things. The left hand doesn't talk to the right and most people simply don't care, it's not money out of their pocket. Drives me nuts though, I hate waste, and corporations are often incredibly wastedful, yet they're happy to cut amenities and benefits to save a few bucks.
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