General > General Technical Chat

I died a little inside today.

<< < (24/30) > >>

ddavidebor:

--- Quote from: SeanB on April 09, 2013, 04:15:14 pm ---I used to recycle old autopilots to keep the rest of the fleet running. Take one cubic metre mostly mechanical box with nearly 1000 syncros, resolvers, adders, subtractors and other synchro goodies and use them as needed as spares. Those that were unusable for some reason ( no call for a sine/cosine adder) became a source of small bearings and coils mostly to keep fans running. What was not used went into a big hole where a bulldozer drove over it.

--- End quote ---


A sine addee wow look funny!

peterthenovice:

--- Quote from: sha256 on April 09, 2013, 02:27:25 am ---I literaly just registerd to chime in on this very topic.

I used to work for one of the big box office stores here in the US and their policy was we had to destroy any items the manufacture didn't want back and toss it into the dumpster.  This would include most small electronics from digital cameras to mp3 players to routers, almost all office supplies that didn't sell or were opened/damaged, and even 24packs of water that had a bottle damaged or it expired.  Now i'm not saying that destroying a $1000 projector that someone used once or  a pack of 23 bottles of water can't be a little fun but totaly wastefull.  Most of it of course went into the dumpster unharmed and retrived as quickly as possible by myself or another employee that was off at the time.  I still use a Samsung all-in-one laser printer that was opened and never used.  It was pretty funny when I went to fetch it too.  The daily dumpster divers got there about two minutes before I did so I called the guy who just put it out to help me convince them it was junk.  So he came out with a large trash bag full of paper and made a comment about what bad shape it was in and I offered them what I had in my wallet for it.  Which if I remember correctly was $4.  Not a bad deal for what was around $500 new.  We would also bring all the office supplys to one of the local elementry schools, gotta help someone when you profit from whats technically trash.  But to bring it full circle the other employee was questioned and caught for it and then got charged for theft.  He ended up with just being fired but he was charged by the state a fine around $700 since it was still declared a crime.  Not really too bad though since digital cameras and mp3 playes fetched a lot of money off ebay.  But the next two people who had the same job got fired for doing the same thing.

I'm currently a Cisco VoIP engineer for a large IT company whos name I won't mention (caugh... it's two letters long) on a contract for another large corporation and it's pretty bad here too.  The company I'm contracted too aquired another and when migrating parts of their VoIP network into the existing it left a lot of less than a year old servers free.  So instead of shipping them to us where we'd use them in our lab they went to a shredder company for destruction.  There was probably 20-30 of them in total, I'm not sure of their initial cost but still a lot of value just wasted.  But the rules of the company I accually work for are very different.  We can get almost anything shipped to us where it can accually get reused and not wasted.  Then after a little while it sort of winds up in limbo and finds a great home in another lab outside the office.   Best recycling ever and is great for getting certifications and trust me used Cisco gear still fetchs a high price on the used market so the less you buy the better.  Once I'm done or decide to move on I can bring it all back and it's no longer collecting dust in my garage.   Of course we also have a recycling program to pick up unused equipment but we fill out the list of what to send off so what doesn't make it is never missed.  So sometimes the lack of efficiency in a large company can be great.

I think what I've learned is as long as your not greedy you might be able to score something for yourself.  It's also why I like to bring random boxes in and out of the office, sometimes empty... :)

--- End quote ---


you have it better than most.

peterthenovice:
 :'( reminds me of flanders fields  :'(

Obi_Kwiet:
I was once a co-op at a small Louisville company. However, they didn't have anything for me to do, so I got contracted out to work a the development building at GE's appliance park. I  would finish my week's black box testing after about two days, so the rest of the time I'd poke around and explore. There was a huge refrigerator box of electronic parts that were destined for recycling, and many of them were brand new leftovers. I asked my bosses if I could take some home, and they said they didn't care. I'm sure it was completely against company policy, but I spent about a month rummaging through this bin with my legs dangling out, and scored all kinds of cool stuff, including 8 or 9 extremely high quality pixel matrix VFDs.

TerraHertz:

--- Quote from: peterthenovice on April 09, 2013, 08:27:35 pm ---I ask all eevblog members for a moment of silence for all that poor  test equipment.

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

--- End quote ---

Might be better to ask Dave for a permanent forum topic.
Seriously, the way the Australian laws and accounting systems are set up to cause this, is really evil. And it persists due to the lack of public awareness of how ubiquitous it is. Having a permanently accessible and easily findable discussion place for anyone to post details of examples of this wanton destruction they see, really could go a long way to fixing the fundamental causes. It's a political issue, that can only be fought politically. And that takes public awareness.

One little bit of legislation, saying depreciated / written-off items can be given away or sold for less than (say) 5% of original purchase value without impacting the depreciation & rebates accounting, would go a long way to fixing this.

Going further and making it a criminal offense to destroy equipment/items that could reasonably be usefully used by someone else, without making a reasonable attempt to make the items publicly available, would be even better.

Here's another example. Years ago a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical supplies factory/warehouse in Matraville was shutting down. A lady GP I knew was told by contacts that there was a whole doctor's clinic there that has been shuttered, complete with all the equipment. She had overseas contacts in some poor nations, and inquired if she could go to the site and see if any of the equipment could be donated to doctors in those poor countries. A J&J representative gave the OK, and arranged a time. I got asked if I wanted to come along, since apparently there might be some electronics gear there too.

At the site our 'guide' was a smarmy little man. Not to mention ethnic stereotypes, but I groaned inside, recognizing immediately a particular syndrome of bullshit laying that was likely to happen here. So we got a tour of the place, with Mr Smarmy at all times pretending that sure, it was very likely my doctor friend could have what she asked for.  The place was being gutted, mostly empty.... except for the rows and rows of pallets of pharmaceutical/chemist/medical supplies, mostly shrink wrapped.  All 'stock to be disposed of' according to Mr Smarmy. The clinic was well equipped, all just sitting there gathering dust. Also chemical labs, with demolition begun. One electronics lab, stripped. Except for one thing randomly left in a drawer among some junk - a beautiful electric field strength meter. No, I couldn't have it. Why not? Umm... because.

It turned out my doctor friend couldn't have anything either. Mr Smarmy's job that day was to present a reasonable, sensitive J&J corporate face, while never actually admitting that it was all going to be shredded regardless, and there was no way anyone was going to be given anything. I could tell he was really enjoying his day.


Edit: Coincidentally, just got a spam email from this group:  http://www.change.org/en-AU
Something to consider.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod