Hello all,
I am Steve; new to the forum but have been reading it for a few months now. I have been playing with computers since the fourth grade (35 now), and professionally been in IT for 15+ years now. Also have a background in steel fabrication; family business which has since closed. I have always had a ton of clients that needed to discard their e-scrap, and so I have now been venturing into this area. I lease a 3-400 sq. ft area in town now, went through the DEP blessing and have also been recently endorsed by the city as an e-waste facility. Starting off very small though, but hope to grow in time. I still have my own IT business part time and work full time for an IT services firm... too much to do...
Though strongly familiar with systems and components, I am still learning the grading and sorting process. This forum is great for this information and I appreciate any help along the way. If I can help in any way please ask me. One area I may be of assistance; refurbishing systems. I have worked extensively with brokers for moving large volumes of refurb equipment and in charge of the lab that tested them. My RMA rate was less than 1% yearly, in which most cases it was user error and the equipment tested fine upon return to us. I have developed fast efficient ways to test equipment and also clone machines. I have a hard time investing hours into a machine that may yield a $50 return, so have found ways to maximize this process if anyone has interest. Glad to trade off my service experience with recycling experience.
Three things I question to begin with re: efficiency and returns on effort; Maybe you can all chime in on these...
- Printers - Seem to be one of the least worth items to obtain for the effort involved. At this point, for the 30+ minutes it takes to clean one up responsibly, you get a few tiny boards and possibly a cartridge you can resell as empty. Where is the value in printers? Otherwise, I can sell them whole for 0.04-0.06 a lb...
- Flat Panels - Same applies here; besides the small gold finger board inside and a few ounces of wire...
- CRT's - All options here? I currently charge $0.25 lb to take them and have to pay out $0.10 to discard them locally to a larger facility. I do not care to break them open as it opens a huge can of worms with the DEP to do so...
- CDROMS/Floppy's - Can fetch I believe $0.18 lb whole for these, boards, plastic and metal all gone, no effort. Is it worth breaking them down for boards alone? I am then left with time invested, plastic and metal which doesn't fetch me anything currently. I currently "donate" my shred metal to my landlord in exchange for use of the trash dumpster. He also has a metal dumpster on-site so it's convenient. In time, I will get my own when I hit those volumes, but the trade off is fine for now. He may get $90 a mo/ tops for the metals I toss in the dumpster, cheaper then $130 bi-weekly for a trash dumpster.
- Finger cards - also, is it really worth the extra effort to separate the gold trim?
Time efficiency is a HUGE deal to me, in some cases on the service side I can fetch $50-$150/hr.. so in some cases, it may fetch a few more cents to break things down more, but if I have to invest hours to do so...not sure it's THAT worth it... it's more about dollars per hour for me than a flat payout for a million hours invested. Otherwise I would stick to the full time job. Volume and efficiency seem to play the biggest role in this business... unless it's just for extra money. I want this to grow and create jobs etc... so I take it pretty seriously.
Thanks all!
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