What To Do With Circuit Boards?

As part of my scrapping, I obviously take all kinds of scrap, including ewaste. As a result, I end up accumulating quite a few circuit boards of various grades. To date, I have just been removing copper bearing material and aluminum, and silver contacts as they are usually “easy”, and just send the remainder of my board, no matter the grade, straight to the ONE local yard that WILL accept them as shred. My question to long time scrappers is what do you do with your circuit boards? I’ve watched all the videos about going after every piece of gold, silver and other precious metals, but it looks SO time consuming for such small amounts! I’ve also read things that say there are risks of lead poisoning from the solder as well as other health related issues tied to circuit boards. I’ve also checked shipping costs to places like BoardSort and with the kind of material I get, I’m pretty sure shipping would eat up my profit (same with shipping to any other buyer here on the board).

So, with all of that being said, with the exception of those of you who are hard core ewaste scrappers going for all the PM you can find, what DO you guys do with your circuit boards? How much effort do you put into PM recovery, if any, and what do you do with the remainder of your board? Just curious because it seems like almost everything has at least INE board in it these days.......also, if it matters, I work in a one car garage that I share with the spouse for workspace AND storage, so hoarding large amounts of material to make pallets for shipping is NOT an option. Thank you for any constructive advice!

If storing and palletizing isn't an options then to the shred pile as you are doing could be you only option. I would say though, maybe learn to identify the best boards, and just hoard those. The high value boards that are $5+/lb can be sent without a pallet and still be profitable/better than shred. But if you aren't getting enough for that then probably isn't even worth your time and just keep shredding them

Or see if you can find a local, greater than shred buyer..

I am not a "hard core" ewaste person persay but I have shipped of many ewaste pallets at this point and have handled thousands of PCs/server and scrapped/resold a bunch.

There could be a whole book written about this subject and how and what to do, but if you don't have storage (and aren't willing to find storage) and won't ship via pallet, the ewaste game will be a challenge for you, just keep shredding...also most people on here put in 0 effort to pm recovery..., it is not economical to do on an individual scale most times and involves a ton of knowledge, chemicals, etc etc.... Sorting and sending is usually the best bet for most people

That would be amazing to have that kind of volume. However, in Eastern Oklahoma there is not a single buyer for boards that I’ve been able to find, so they would just go to shred at the yard for about .03/pound🙄..... I would DIE for a halfway local buyer I could take them to!

Let me know weights you would want to ship I may be able to help call me anytime 814-442-9060 Terry

Wouldn't depopulate them at all. Google says there are at least two e-waste specialists in Tulsa. Dunno what they pay for circuit boards. One idea would be to be the e-waste guy in your area since there isn't another option. To accumulate more volume to make freight costs better, pair with small town governments and school districts in your area to host electronics recycling events. You should already have relatively affordable freight costs to forum buyers in Colorado and Tennessee and, at slightly higher freight costs, further northeast and west. I would not be the closest buyer to ship to but as example, if you have to pay .35/lb to ship power boards to Las Vegas and I buy them at .45/lb, that's still .07/lb better than for the shred price by you and that's the low end of circuit boards. Everything else with few exceptions starts over 1.00/lb. But your closest buyers (and likely cheapest freight) on this forum are in Tennessee and Colorado if I'm not mistaken. And if you don't want to save up for freight, focus on boards buyers pay over $1/lb for and the Fedex Ground pricing will still leave you with drastically higher returns than selling at shred.