E-waste start to finish

As I mentioned in the Introductions forum, my wife and I started company for recycling e-waste. It was the right time to do so here in Indiana as the state passed a law banning electronics in landfills. So we have actually had a problem keeping up, which is a good problem to have in my opinion.

I have noticed that many have said that CRT monitors are the biggest issue with this type of company. I would agree they do create some problems. But we were lucky enough to find a place that will accept the tubes for nothing as long as they are not broken. So we strip everything off of them, including the yoke, board and the plastic and then the company will pick up the tubes when I have at least 20 of them.

When we started we decided to be a no landfill company so we even sell the plastics to a regrind company. It only brings about .10 per pound but it is still money.



The biggest problem we have would be printers...Some of them, especially the older ones, have a fair amount of steel in them, but they are a major pain to take apart. Thankfully I have a buddy that likes to hang out at the shop and likes to tear things apart for something to do.

Thus far I would have to say that this has been a great business for us. Not only do we recycle out all of the materials, we often find things that can still be used and resold for a profit.

Our first big load was an automotive factory...They had recently upgraded all of their computer systems and so on. Most of the computers were too out of date to resell but they had also upgraded their electronic time clocks...I took the older ones back to the shop and plugged them in and they worked....so we listed them on Ebay and ended up with a profit of $2100 for the time clocks alone.

Would love to hear from other e-scrappers about their experiences.