Author Topic: I died a little inside today.  (Read 47026 times)

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Offline David_AVD

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #100 on: April 07, 2013, 02:06:25 am »
A while ago, our council introduced the 4 bins system.

1) General waste (for landfill)
2) Recycling (paper, bottles, cans, etc)
3) Green waste (leaves, shrubs, etc)
4) ??
 

Offline digsys

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #101 on: April 07, 2013, 03:14:07 am »
Quote from: David_AVD
   4) ?? 
Hazardous / Electronic waste !! It was an awesome idea, cute bin. Only lasted a few weeks, maybe after I asked questions
when I caught them??  Only supposing here :-)
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Offline David_AVD

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #102 on: April 07, 2013, 04:56:33 am »
At work, we keep the scrap (insulated) wire for taking to the local metal recycler about once a year (when we get ~ 150kg of it).  We do have to cut any connectors off, but they accept it with the PVC covering.  They also accept power transformers (for the copper content) as well as steel (hardly worth it) and aluminium.

Fluorescent tubes are expensive to send for recycling (about $80 per 60 4' tubes), but our paper/cardboard/plastic recycling bins are full every fortnight and the service doesn't cost much.

Lately I've been giving a lot of electronic components and equipment away (Hackerspace, etc) rather than bin it.  Hopefully that gives it a better chance of avoiding the land fill.  I used to hoard a lot of electronic stuff, but the time has come to reclaim that lost space and give it to someone else to use, or hoard!
 

Offline peter.mitchell

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #103 on: April 07, 2013, 07:00:37 am »
transformers are expensive, hackerspace that stuff!
 

Offline David_AVD

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #104 on: April 07, 2013, 08:32:00 am »
transformers are expensive, hackerspace that stuff!

The transformers that are recycled are dead ones.  The good (but not used by us) go to the hackerspace guys.
 

Offline peterthenovice

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #105 on: April 07, 2013, 01:25:52 pm »
50 million dollars might be saved every year if only those companies would do the the right thing.
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Offline M. András

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #106 on: April 07, 2013, 03:13:18 pm »
and they ban the lead from the solder for this insane reason to fill deliberately the landfills with electronics due to idiot managment and laws, how quickly could the new generation learn if those equipments would end up in their hands instead of the landfills, or to schools poorly equipped etc, universities should have give to the intrested students the equipments they no longer use instead of binning it
 

Offline digsys

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #107 on: April 08, 2013, 10:08:56 am »
OK That was spooky .. Just saw the local news that our Waverley council has (Re-?) Introduced free Electronic waste drop-offs,
Including CRTs ... mebbe they're monitoring my posts ???? or me ???
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Offline TerraHertz

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #108 on: April 08, 2013, 01:47:44 pm »
OK That was spooky .. Just saw the local news that our Waverley council has (Re-?) Introduced free Electronic waste drop-offs,
Including CRTs ... mebbe they're monitoring my posts ???? or me ???

Maybe they watched a youtube video on recovering gold from mobile phones and such. Supposedly quite a lucrative process.
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Offline Randall W. LottTopic starter

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #109 on: April 08, 2013, 08:51:09 pm »
and they ban the lead from the solder for this insane reason to fill deliberately the landfills with electronics due to idiot managment and laws, how quickly could the new generation learn if those equipments would end up in their hands instead of the landfills, or to schools poorly equipped etc, universities should have give to the intrested students the equipments they no longer use instead of binning it

Exactly.  I would be thrilled to learn about any sort of gear if I had a chance to play with it.  Now no one will.
- Randy
 

Offline dermitza

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #110 on: April 08, 2013, 11:44:37 pm »
I die once a year  :-\
 

Offline sha256

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #111 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... :)

 

Offline Randall W. LottTopic starter

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #112 on: April 09, 2013, 02:51:06 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... :)

I'm glad my topic got you on to this forum.  It's the best electronics forum on the web, that I know of!

I wish I could get away with hauling out a box of discarded goodies.  I guess most of us need to pay for all of our gear.

I'm sure every interested student employee could have walked away with a bench power supply from the latest dumping.
- Randy
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #113 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.
 

Offline peterthenovice

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #114 on: April 09, 2013, 08:27:35 pm »
I ask all eevblog members for a moment of silence for all that poor  test equipment.

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(
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Offline ddavidebor

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I died a little inside today.
« Reply #115 on: April 09, 2013, 09:49:10 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.


A sine addee wow look funny!
David - Professional Engineer - Medical Devices and Tablet Computers at Smartbox AT
Side businesses: Altium Industry Expert writer, http://fermium.ltd.uk (Scientific Equiment), http://chinesecleavers.co.uk (Cutlery),
 

Offline peterthenovice

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #116 on: April 10, 2013, 03:18:15 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... :)


you have it better than most.
a craftsman multimeter, bk precsion scope
 

Offline peterthenovice

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #117 on: April 10, 2013, 03:20:31 am »
 :'( reminds me of flanders fields  :'(
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Offline Obi_Kwiet

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #118 on: April 10, 2013, 03:27:08 am »
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.
 

Offline TerraHertz

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #119 on: April 10, 2013, 03:58:56 am »
I ask all eevblog members for a moment of silence for all that poor  test equipment.

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

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.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2013, 05:14:08 am by TerraHertz »
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Offline tom66

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #120 on: April 10, 2013, 10:58:56 am »
It's not just equipment that is needlessly destroyed, but places like supermarkets just dispose of food that has gone past the "sell by" date but is still perfectly healthy to eat. Also, I was going past a Comet superstore (electronics: TVs, computers etc.) after closing and decided to look in the bins. (I'm a dumpster junkie...) I spotted a nice TV glass cantilever stand... it looked intact but the box was pretty badly torn up. Got it home, and couldn't complete assembly due to a single missing bolt, found that, put it together and it works great. All for the price of a single bolt... Ridiculous. No wonder they went bust...
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #121 on: April 10, 2013, 07:44:42 pm »
My local supermarket will put stuff near expiry ( but not past it, or that is obviously off) out in a special section of refrigerated shelving with a massively reduced price ( and a red sticker) so that it does not go to waste. You can buy a lot of food that way, and you find a lot of pensioners lined up for the selection when it gets unpacked. On a fixed small income any savings mean you can have the odd luxury every so often.
 

Offline vk3yedotcom

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #122 on: October 16, 2017, 06:23:29 pm »
Thought I'd make a quick video on electronic offerings in this year's kerbside collection (suburban Melbourne)

Not so many desktop computers or CRT TVs this year - but a few other bits and pieces.

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Offline medical-nerd

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #123 on: October 16, 2017, 06:43:39 pm »
Hiya

Come on people, it's frigg'n dumpster diving!

Name one person, anywhere, who has a criminal record because of dumpster diving when they are not trespassing.


In my hospital we had someone successfully prosecuted by NHS Fraud and sacked for taking something out of a dumpster on the premises last year.

At least some managers bypass that and give me electronics bits to tear down rather than go in the bin.

Cheers
'better to burn out than fade away'
 

Offline station240

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #124 on: October 16, 2017, 07:28:35 pm »
Worst example of corporate waste I've heard of.
The large US car companies (GM et all) that make electric cars have the batteries made by other companies, yet lack anyone in the car plant that can repair said batteries.
So brand new EV battery packs with faulty electronics, broken wires or other easily fixed fault get send direct to recycling. The recycling company involved aren't that stupid and have taken to reusing the battery modules.
 


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