Hello from Maryland

Hey all,



So I'm what you might call a hobby scrapper I guess. I work in the construction industry as a project engineer and I'm kind of green and recycling minded. Anyway, in construction we throw out TONS of stuff, and it always bothered me that it seemed such a waste. I would ask my bosses and such, "Hey why don't we sort some of this and scrap out the metals and whatnot? At the very least we could probably get a yard to give us a dumpster and even if we didn't get money for it we would at least save on trash pulls!" But they didn't want to really hear it "oh its too much of a pain" "we don't get enough money for the trouble" "Some jackass will end up throwing garbage in the 'metal only' dumpster and then we will have to sort it out" etc. etc.

So I just started dumpster diving on the site. Copper wire at first, and occasionally pipe, though electricians and plumbers are usually pretty savvy about that stuff. But whatever, $10 here, $50 there, hey, it was lunch/beer money for what other people considered trash! Anyway I've kept it up, even have managed to actually get the company to set up "Metal only" dumpsters and such, with a little push from "green" building regulations sweeping the nation. But I still keep it up on my own. And people know i do it, and I will get foreman calling me up saying "Hey, dug out some old wire here if you want it" or "Got some chunks of steel we need to get rid of" and off I go. Works out kinda nice. I've even met other jobsite "vultures" (as we call ourselves on occasion, especially when doing demolition) who have shared insights on what places and yards have best prices on different metals. Now I am starting to experiment a bit with e-waste, and I found this forum when I did a google image search to try and figure out what people were referring too with terms like "daughter boards" "Telecomm boards" "Low grade boards" "Populated boards" etc. None of my local yards seem to want to touch the stuff other than to take it off my hands for recycling, so I was looking to the internet for buying sources.

Well anyway, that's my story so far!


-jw

Welcome from Indiana...

Welcome from NC. Being in the construction industry is a major plus. If you search deep enough you can probably find a few local e-waste buyers but there isn't as many of us as the is metal buyers. Definatley look in the buyers forum here because 9 times out of 10 they will pay a good bit more than local yards