Electronics Recycling Dumpster Diving

I have been very surprised time and time again every time I would go to the recycling centre by the amount of good quality things that get thrown away on a regular basis. Each time I would visit to dump I have always find time to have a peek at the electric and electronic appliances skip.

It is amazing to notice how people overcome their imposed limits and would pick things up as well as chuck their stuff away. Especially on a weekend there will be even some habitué who would always be at the recycling centre to be sure never to miss the best “donations” of the day and I thought : “Why not?” Why shouldn’t we all do that without inhibitions and in fact with some sense of pride. “I recovered something from the garbage and gave it a second life”

It is a win!, win^2! loose?

It is a win for me as I get something for free.

It is a double win for the environment as the item doesn’t need to be created again just for me and doesn’t need to be destroyed. Destroying is the counterpart of creating and it is the counterpart of the costs that are not quite taken into account when giving a value to an item as it hits the market. Destroying or in the best case recycling costs money in the act of collecting and transforming our “garbage” and worse of it all, leaves a heritage to the future generations that will have to find a way to deal with it, most probably with additional costs.

It is a loose for industry maybe. Well industry needs to modernise itself and find a different way to survive, why not re-purposing items and reselling them?

Rant apart, here is the video of what I found at the recycling centre and the hurdles I had to overcome to get my bounty.

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