One of my old jobs had a pallet full of perfectly good PSUs, o-scopes, H bridges, and a bunch of miscellaneous data cables. They were all gonna be trashed either because their projects were cancelled or had a minor flaw they didn’t want to fix. My buddies and I rescued a bunch of equipment before the company padlocked it. My advice is be discreet. Companies hate it when people recover shit they throw out whether it be perfectly good equipment or food.
That makes me really sad. Our town dump has a pay-to-dispose system for electronics like that. It’s $15 to dump anything from laptops and monitors, to ancient hulking mainframes, industrial equipment, stage lighting, and all of the other unwanted things that plug in and spent time rotting in someone’s attic or basement before finally being hauled off for disposal. The disposal container always had a “no scavenging” sign that I would ignore, and I’ve found some pretty sweet loot in there. Stuff like whole gaming PCs whose only problem is a single bad component, vintage analog turntables I’ve cleaned up and repaired, etc.
recently the shipping container where the items are placed has been moved under a camera and a sticker system was implemented. I’m starting to think they might be profiting on both ends from it (the disposal fee from residents and money from a recycler/salvage maybe?) but I’m not quite sure. Or they’re just overly worried about liability from someone doing something dumb or unexpected, and getting someone hurt. The camera only sees who’s going in and out of the container though, not what happens inside there.
My latest strategy to defeat these measures has been buying a sticker to gain access but bringing 2 pieces of unwanted junk: 1 legitimate paid item, and 1 replacement item. I’ll back my car up to partially block the view, then find something good in there and do a sneaky sticker swap onto my “decoy” item. I assume they check and count stickers sold vs. actual items stickered, but they can’t feasibly keep track of what things are or who brought what. Plus they’re understaffed, usually just 2 or 3 overworked guys handling everything for a town of 40,000, who are usually doing something useful besides sitting and watching the cameras for rule breakers. I also get the vibe they’re just happy to be making any money at all for the town, and don’t necessarily care much unless flagrant violations happen or someone gets hurt.
It’s slightly unethical, sure, and I might get caught doing this eventually, but I don’t really care, and am willing to play dumb, act sorry, and take whatever minor slap on the wrist would be entailed with that. It’s not like I’m selling this stuff either, I either keep it for myself or donate it to someone else in need. In my mind I’m not really doing any harm, since they end up with the same net number of items in the end, plus I bought a sticker with actual money, I’m disposing of items which are actually dead and useless, and I’m rescuing something else and extending its useful life. If the thing can’t be used and is really trash, that’s my new “ticket” for next time!
One of my old jobs had a pallet full of perfectly good PSUs, o-scopes, H bridges, and a bunch of miscellaneous data cables. They were all gonna be trashed either because their projects were cancelled or had a minor flaw they didn’t want to fix. My buddies and I rescued a bunch of equipment before the company padlocked it. My advice is be discreet. Companies hate it when people recover shit they throw out whether it be perfectly good equipment or food.
That makes me really sad. Our town dump has a pay-to-dispose system for electronics like that. It’s $15 to dump anything from laptops and monitors, to ancient hulking mainframes, industrial equipment, stage lighting, and all of the other unwanted things that plug in and spent time rotting in someone’s attic or basement before finally being hauled off for disposal. The disposal container always had a “no scavenging” sign that I would ignore, and I’ve found some pretty sweet loot in there. Stuff like whole gaming PCs whose only problem is a single bad component, vintage analog turntables I’ve cleaned up and repaired, etc.
recently the shipping container where the items are placed has been moved under a camera and a sticker system was implemented. I’m starting to think they might be profiting on both ends from it (the disposal fee from residents and money from a recycler/salvage maybe?) but I’m not quite sure. Or they’re just overly worried about liability from someone doing something dumb or unexpected, and getting someone hurt. The camera only sees who’s going in and out of the container though, not what happens inside there.
My latest strategy to defeat these measures has been buying a sticker to gain access but bringing 2 pieces of unwanted junk: 1 legitimate paid item, and 1 replacement item. I’ll back my car up to partially block the view, then find something good in there and do a sneaky sticker swap onto my “decoy” item. I assume they check and count stickers sold vs. actual items stickered, but they can’t feasibly keep track of what things are or who brought what. Plus they’re understaffed, usually just 2 or 3 overworked guys handling everything for a town of 40,000, who are usually doing something useful besides sitting and watching the cameras for rule breakers. I also get the vibe they’re just happy to be making any money at all for the town, and don’t necessarily care much unless flagrant violations happen or someone gets hurt.
It’s slightly unethical, sure, and I might get caught doing this eventually, but I don’t really care, and am willing to play dumb, act sorry, and take whatever minor slap on the wrist would be entailed with that. It’s not like I’m selling this stuff either, I either keep it for myself or donate it to someone else in need. In my mind I’m not really doing any harm, since they end up with the same net number of items in the end, plus I bought a sticker with actual money, I’m disposing of items which are actually dead and useless, and I’m rescuing something else and extending its useful life. If the thing can’t be used and is really trash, that’s my new “ticket” for next time!
I feel like you have the ethical upper hand, keep doing what you’re doing.