| General > General Technical Chat |
| I died a little inside today. |
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| Halcyon:
We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go. |
| jhalar:
--- Quote from: wilfred on October 17, 2017, 09:32:28 am ---I think for the "professional scroungers" they regard them as theives because it reduces the scrap value the contractors receive and they in turn charge the ratepayes a higher fee. Ordinary folk tend to take a different sort of stuff that probably doesn't overlap the money scrap so much. I dislike the people who cut power cords off everything, even servicable stuff. --- End quote --- My council used to have regular 5 times a year scrap and electronics collections. The council could not deal with the number of "professional scroungers" so they changed the collection from a regular scheduled pickup to one that you need to book a pickup time. We still get 5 x scrap and 5 x electronics free pickups but the "scroungers" don't know when a pickup will be made. This stopped them coming. |
| amyk:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on October 17, 2017, 11:47:25 pm ---We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go. --- End quote --- Military? I'm not surprised. After all, they constantly handle things that are built to destroy and be destroyed... |
| calexanian:
I have a little experience with this. Look for the local e waste recyclers. Call a few and see if they offer disposal of government or financial computer systems. That will probably be the place they are taking it. Most counties have an E Waste place that handles all of the government hard drives and bank computers. Certain public offices must destroy their systems every few years for security reasons. At my local one the high sensitivity things like hard drives and such go right into a shredder. Its kinda neat to watch. Computers go in, finely ground scraps come out. This is then separated into plastics, ferrous metals, non ferrous metals, and then other junk. Non critical items are evaluated for any secondary value or for repair. Certain things are saved to collect replacement parts or batteries and such from, then into the shredder it goes. The ground and sorted result is shipped to stockton, and then to china to be recycled. Of course we know that probably just means dumped and or burned there, then chemically leach heap metal recovery, then into the ground water system it goes. Etc. And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, little......... Recycle.. :-DD |
| Red Squirrel:
--- Quote from: IanMacdonald on October 17, 2017, 08:52:03 am ---Most of this is due to scrooge-type bureaucracy. Departments have a budget, but if a department improves its efficiency and reduces its costs, then it gets penalized by having its budget reduced. So, they always use up their budget so it can't be reduced next year. If they don't actually need new gear they just throw away some serviceable stuff. I recall employees at a certain defence manufacturer reporting that a skip full of near-new electronics hand tools was sent to landfill. Employees were strictly warned not to take any of them for personal use. Probably because if they were seen around then someone might twig that they didn't need replacing. :-X --- End quote --- This style of budgeting is the most retarded thing, but it's sadly more or less the norm at most companies, and especially government. It's so wasteful. I worked at a hospital, it is sad the amount of stuff I saw get wasted, and that's all tax dollars too, so it makes it even more enraging. Thankfully we were sometimes allowed to keep stuff. But I did not need over 9,000 power cords, so I did have to let some stuff go to the bin. But looking back I kinda regret not taking them, I could have at least brought them to the copper recycler. Ironicly I probably would have donated the money to the hospital foundation... They probably had some weird political reason as to why they could not do that. |
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