Amazing What People Throw Away - Making Money From Peoples “Rubbish”
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- The monetary value of products being thrown away is substantial. If you have the time to find things worth saving you can make quite a bit of money selling them.
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One man’s trash is another man’s treasure in real life. I completely agree with trying to sell the device or product you’re not using anymore to loved ones or anyone else interested before completely giving up and throwing it away.
Always why I never buy a new car, you can buy one a couple years old with very little miles on it because it was a lease return. If you have something you don't want anymore, there are probably many people less privileged than you that will gladly accept a 5 year old laptop or iPhone. I try giving as much as I can to my local donation center.
I totally agree, I’m going to fix up an old iPhone 4 in the future because of its elegant design
True
More like one mans dick is another mans willy LOL
@@scepter0143 Agreed, and new cars price will lower by alot in a short amount of time so its kinda waste of money lol
Well said Hugh and thanks heaps for the shout-out! 😁 It's not just tech stuff with me - I've been cleaning out house-lots & sheds for 20 years now and there's value everywhere that most people normally just send to landfill! Enough that I make a good living out of it! Good on you for doing your bit mate! 👍😊
Now it gives me the idea to ask if they have any laptops/PCs at the local recycling center
@@Logilype They do have at mine, but they won't let me take things from the crates unfortunately! The local council are worried about legal issues if someone electrocutes themselves! 😒
In a world always at risk of crisis to grab raw materials such as semiconductors, throwing away devices that could be reused or recycled is a nonsense, even companies would find a benefit in taking back old or broken devices to use their materials. Nice video as always.
they could, but it’s unfortunately cheaper for them to make new parts than recycle old parts. :/
They wont change 😂
Capitalism doesn't care. Many companies have a tunnel vision for short-term gain (profit) and little to no sight of the long-term consequences (waste, pollution, impact on human heath).
The thing is, that manufacturing new is a reliable standardised process which can be done on a large scale. Recycling is a lot less reliable, since the raw materials are incorporated in all kind of other materials, which often are even toxic or become im the process of recycling.
@@maggnet4829 It basically about entropy, isn't it ?
raw materials extract have very low entropy, they're simple and ordered chains of atoms, so they can be easily extracted and refined and processed chemically at scale.
But when they are made into a complex device, all of the elements are combined into a highly entropic blob of chemical complexity that so hard to extract, even biological life, which is adapted at processing small complex chemical things struggle to recover the materials from our trash, its too much concentrated and too much different elements all mixed together.
Its a battle for ever higher entropy, perhaps we should just try to make less landfill items, by forcing things to be repairable, or forcing people to properly dispose of things.
But I don't see it working if you don't attack the supply side of things.
Eventually the problem kind of solves itself as the cost of mining becomes too great, for example 85% of the aluminum is already recycled, and the rest isn't recycled because its in use, a small 5% or 10% is still lost, but that's better than 99% being lost.
And then there's plastic, perhaps we should just burn all the plastic in closed autoclaves (so the toxic fumes are contained, and only harmless CO2 goes out), and extract all the other non-organic materials, there's no other way to extract resources from plastic, plastics aren't recyclable and they are hard to separate.
Hugh, as an old Guy nearer to the grave than not, I wholeheartedly concur with everything you've said in this video. I'm 71 years old, I hark from a time when we had stores that repaired things, and manufacturers made replacement parts available. I watch your videos with dismay when you speak about Corporations such as Apple and Samsung who make it almost impossible to repair items by making them of moulded modular construction which defies repair. The planet needs Guys like you and your counterparts to keep broadcasting the message that built in obsolesence and the let's buy new ethos has to change. Bless you Guy, keep up the good work.
Meanwhile, most tech RUclipsrs at the slightest spec change or anti-environment/consumer design change: *REVOLUTIONARY, MUCH INNOVATION!*
Thank you so much for rising awareness, I love your brilliant content!
Most of them are actually paid to say that, so yeah😂
@@enosmisu6170 they are part of the problem...
I call it unnovation. :D
So true...
I've been watching your vids for a while man and I gotta say I related with this the most. I recently got the chance to save ~60 PCS at my school from going to e-waste and although I can't sell them, I've been refurbishing them and giving them to fellow students who don't have devices at home.
That is awesome, maybe try to get some recipients involved, could be an interesting learning experience for them and save a bit of time for you
This is an amazing example to set
Really really cool! Good stuff man
I remember reading a book called "Surely you're joking Mr.Feynman!" which is about the life of famous physicist Richard Feynman. As it turns out, he'd get broken radios, fix them, and resell them. The only problem with those radios was that some tiny mechanism failed, say some wires in coils loosened or something else. It's pretty fascinating how stuff can break only because some minor thing stopped functioning, haha!
Its a throw away society. I live pretty well off people's garbage. If I had more storage I could of built my house off the stuff that's thrown away. One of my favorite finds was a dumpster full of vinyl records about 3000 records. Take care from Canada eh!
Records, guitars, amps, pedals, and especially for me my laptops and computers
Food 🤦🏾♂️ chairs
My father bought an amazing pair of floor speakers right before I was born from a local hi-fi store (I am about to turn 31 years old). They are still working flawlessly, albeit he had so do some repairs on them a few years ago which he could easily do (it was nothing super sophisticated) . They will likely outlive him because they were built so amazingly (he he has taken great care of them), and are ultimately built to last. Thanks for the video, you're pretty great.
Here in Ireland, if you go to a recycling centre and try to take the computers that are thrown away they will call the guards (police).
I was able to rescue 3 x Amiga A1200 and 1 x A500 computers. They are are restored and upgraded now, happily living with me
Nice find!
Imagine having a huge dumpster with a lot of good reusable working electronic stuff in your country but no one allowed to enter or take those devices away. That must be exceptionally painful
That is sadly too common. Where I live (Spain) you are also not allowed to take anything from the recycling center, but generally the people working there are cool enough to let you take stuff anyway.
It is sad how the workers have more common sense than the politicians that prohibited it.
@@DrBernon you are not allowed to take stuff from my local dumps too, but usually there are no employees around and you to watch you can rather easily just shove a laptop for example to a plastic bag and go away. if the employees see you they will yell at you. I have taken a cassette deck and a PS3 controller from my local dump.
That’s crazy. Well done to ya
There’s an electronic reclining bin a few blocks from me. I usually pull a few thousand dollars out of there a year. I just got a few flawless hp all in ones from there a few days ago. The amount of perfect condition laptops (with chargers) there is insane!
Unfortunately it's usually cheaper to buy new than repair. Many years ago there were repair shops for every kind of electrical item, now the only ones left are for mobile phones and computers
Back in 2014 I found a used macbook air from 2010 at the local junkyard in Italy. It had an inflated battery, I took it home, removed the battery, ordered generic battery and charger, the laptop was working perfectly. I restored it to factory settings and sold it on ebay for nearly 400€ in profit. When rubbish is actually treasure :). Great video as usual!
Great video as always. It never ceases to amaze me what people toss in the dumpster. I donate as much as I possibly can ,because like you had mentioned, just because it doesn’t have a worth to me, doesn’t mean it is worthless to someone else.
Wise words. Not many people think that way, unfortunately. Many people buy shiny new things (especially phones), even when they can't really afford them. They always want to have the best thing, even if the old one is good enough. I'm still using S10e and see absolutely no reason to upgrade (especially since it's the last Samsung flagship with the headphone jack).
@@1seb11 lmao, I can respect that. Custom ROMs can extend life of an old device too. I switched to S10e from S5, where I used Android 11 Lineage rom and now S10 series devices got an official Lineage support as well.
@Kanaba Nakamura How is the Xcover6 Pro going to outlive devices with better specs? Is it more durable?
Me too! Rocking an S10e and going fine so far. Just a minor repair.
This is exactly what got me into developing repair skills. I have a 20th Anniversary DualShock 4 at home, who's left stick is bugging out. Sure, it took some time to learn it, but through the power of soldering and parts from Amazon it now lives on and allows me to play sit-down PS4 VR games because the DualSense lightbar does not the way the DualShock's one works, as well as some local multiplayer games with friends
I wish I could find stuff like this. Except my parents wouldn't allow me to have this stuff in the house.
Why? I get that they're dirty and whatnot but antibacterial wipes have been a thing for decades.
I use to live in Seattle, when I was on the school bus I want see CRT tv sets just sitting on the side of the road, I always wanted to save them, a few times I have found phones on the sidewalk, and one time, I found a whole windows vista computer which just needed a power supply. I later sold that computer to my neighbors who needed a computer for online classes (I found the computer in 2018 and sold it in 2020, so you can see why it was needed for online classes).
Despite my hate of 2020 because I was mostly stuck in the confines of my yard and my house, I still miss those days because I could pet my cat while taking tests, I could do other things in between classes, and after the restrictions let up, I could walk around my neighborhood, and I made some of my best finds during that time.
Said funds include:
The previously mentioned computer
Another computer ( which I still have )
A Daewoo CRT tv set
2 phones
A clock
And a (cheep) camera
Start with small broken things like phones & laptops. Keep them under your bed.
The first time you fix a family members device for free your parents will understand...👍
Thats what storage units are for. ;) And then when you save their bacon with something you found on the street you can tell them where it really came from (not from a shop as you originally led them to believe)
Keep it in the garage or the back room and you should be ok.
Oooh Hugh is a vintage furniture lover!
I already knew you were an amazing person, but this is just the cherry on top of the cake!
Keep up the great work, man!
Yes, that holds true. Decommissioned PCs from Japan and South Korea are sold for cheap here in the Philippines. I had 3 of these, a Dell Latitude E4500 from 🇰🇷 and a Sony VAIO 14 and a HP Elite 8200 USMT PC from 🇯🇵.
USMT, more like USDT
About the furniture thing, my old computer desk was a desk that my father made back in the 1970s. It still holds up well after nearly 50 years of use.
I once tried selling like 10 dell small form factor PCs for 50 bucks each (working but no drive). I had people lowballing me and not responding after "is it available". I took out the I7-4790s out of them and sold on eBay for about 40 dollars each 🤣 i didnt even have to leave the house as the postal carrier would pick up my chips when they dropped the mail. You are right man, theres a buyer for everything!
Geez. That's a steal even if you need to buy RAM sticks, a power supply and disks/solid state drives externally.
My computer is running has an i5-4570 with 16 GB DDR3 RAM and 240 GB SSD/500 GB HDD. And I'm perfectly happy with it.
The i7-4790 is a damn good CPU, even by today's standards.
@@imnotbeluga007 SSDs are a blessing for an old dog PC 🙏
This is a good point. Some stuff just doesn't have a market.
It's painful to see, but, well, what is one going to do? Infinite resources don't exist.
My father used to work in a company that threw away 6 netbooks. He got them and gave to me. I was able to make 2 work by interchanging parts. From these 2, one I immediatly sold. The other one I used for about a year and sold it to a friend of mine. And she kept using it for like 3 years. This is a real issue, the ammount of impact these things are doing to the environment is immensurable. Sadly most people still have the culture of throwing things away like that.
Every once in a while, I'll see people tossing out fairly new to old lawn mowers, weed whackers, and etc. Most of the time they need a new spark plug or needs a carburetor rebuild. It's a shame, really.
I also believe in repairing broken electronics or appliances before getting rid of them. My 10 year old dishwasher broke a few months ago, turns out it was the door handle switch, that I didn't even need to replace, I just cleaned the contacts. It was tempting to just say, **** it, I want a new fancy dishwasher, but at $700USD or more for a nice one, I was like, nope! There is nothing else wrong with this one.
My MacBook Pro is almost 10 years old. Apple tried to obsolete it by no longer offering OS updates, but I got around that (OpenCore Legacy Patcher). It works just fine! However, my 2011 Mac Mini was suffering so badly, I did replace it with a new M2 Mini, but the old one lives on running Ubuntu, and it performs like an almost new machine.
I just refreshed my 2014 MBP R with a newer, larger, SSD, I replaced the battery, repasted the GPU and cleaned the fan. I felt accomplished, saved money, and bucked the trend...for a while longer.
I also finally updated from OS X Yosemite (2014) to Big Sur (2022) this year. Now to find apps to replace my old non-compatable ones.
Solid video dude again. Really vibe with this. Really getting pissed off with the growing anti consumer methodology of companies, mining of data for profit and constant advertising and scarily the centralisation of various internet services and internet infrastructure.
Best one I found fro e-waste is Electrolux dough mixer. I gave it to my 80 her old grandmother and now I get return all kind of cakes and everything. Best part is; she's got something interesting to do and keep her mind in condition.
1:34 got me dying
I'm concerned about where humans are going as a species if they can't clean a vacuum dust filter by tapping it on a counter.
In some countries most things are repaired. But still, sometimes there's nowhere to keep things, so it goes to landfills.
i once found at my local apartment complex a fujjitsu esprimo e85+ that just h components like ram and hdd missing bt still worked, i also like to go on daily to a tech recycling bin where lots of interesting stuff gets thrown in, some of my best finds were : a 1970's calculator, a microsoft lumia 532, a pretty scratched up yet still working 1rst gen apple magic mouse, multiple blackberries, and a lot of old phone that mostly worked
I live in the UK. Handling e-waste requires a license, fees and record keeping. Tradesmen removing items from premises without a licence and paperwork can be prosecuted. With electrical items, they have to be safety tested before resale after all that. The rubbish dump run by the local council bans individuals removing items away from the site. Businesses have self-interest in ensuring that repair and reuse does not happen, though the BBC has shown TV programmes promoting repair/reuse.
Sadly it's not always economical to try to fix some items
Working as a service tech for a restaurant group receipt printers tend to have a lifespan of 2-3 years at most. Much of this is due to them being in a kitchen environment
The majority is caused by employees slamming them shut, forgetting to remove old roll spindles, dropping them or knocking them off, spilling stuff on them, and other issues.
New printers can cost us $30-$100 each depending on brand, vendor, and quanity.
I used to work on repairing some of the older ones but was spending 1-2 hours on average and even after that roughly 40% still wouldn't work. For us it's easier to toss broken printers unless it is a simple 5 minute fix than to spend a long time repairing them
At my last job, I rescued a Dell Optiplex and a Gateway laptop from around 2006. The only thing wrong with the gateway was a corrupted OS, so I reinstalled XP and it worked
Good Job
My parents were appalled when I told them that I'm buying my "new" phone used. I have never been happier to spend so much less than retail, with just a little work. All of my camera gear, my phone, and my laptop are all used, the laptop and phone fixed by me.
Why would they be appalled about that?
@@shadowcomputing They don't see the value in used gear and have this mentality that used stuff is infinitely worse than buying new. It's irrational
It's Insane. I wish I could EVER find 0.1% of that. It's SO sad to see such INSANE waste.
I think Hugh has inspired many people to think twice before throwing something to the bin. At least for me, i will repair my phone if it is possible. For my experience, Sony TVs last way more than any other TV brands i have had.
Agreed, I have a Sony TV from the early 2010s, the NX720.
Its still awesome, and I don't find the need to "upgrade" to a new TV
Yup, very recently replaced a sony SD CRT, no idea how old it was, but it worked fine.
I've made over $1000 in just selling garbage found in my small neighborhood. Truly awful to think of the amount of goods thrown in landfill that are working, and how people just don't seem to care at all.
Wow, such an awesome video! Some of my coolest fines include an iPhone 11 that works perfectly with only a few cracks on the front and back, a 1980s tape recorder that after some minor repairs now works fine, and probably my favorite fine. A Google pixel two with an OtterBox case in near mint condition. I sold it a few months ago for $75. To think that all of that stuff was pulled out of a recycling bin headed to be broken into pieces.
My man went from talking about right to repair to ranting about consumerism
While Hugh is busy putting out this video today, someone was equally busy drilling holes and tearing apart their ten year old tablets and laptops so no else could use it, which is what I found today.
Who could that be?
i ended up getting lucky today and finding a minty moto g power 2021!
I once saw the same with shoes. Some very nice, expensive women's leather shoes, with cuts on them so no one could use them, dumped next to the trash. You really have to be a piece of crap to do that. No one else could be fashionable but her, I suppose was the mentality...
@@DrBernon Same mindset, i guess, but at least it's pretty easy to trash a pair of shoes, which still retain some value depending on condition, but what sense does it make to spend time and effort disassembling and destroying 10 year old tech that's worthless anyway.
@@hzzn It is the same mindset. And I find it worse to trash something that is still worth quite a lot, than to trash something worthless. Those were boutique shoes, not mass-produced garbage.
And I know that some companies are required to destroy devices that contain company data, so usually they drill the hard drives. But since a tablet has no hard drive, maybe chose to do the same they do with hard rives, but with the whole device. The shoes was just pure spite.
Thanks for shining light on this massive consumerism problem. It has so many issues, also the damage it does on the planet with the resources needed for manufacturing, ahipping, use and proper disposal or recycling.
I once saved an Acer Nitro 5 from getting thrown out because it had no screen and Windows was broken. Everything else was perfectly working and temps we're excellent. While it was a fairly old laptop with a 7th gen i5 and GTX 1050, it's still more than capable for demanding tasks nowadays.
It took about 3 days to install Windows by using another laptop with identical IGPU and messing around with remote desktop apps to be able to install the GPU driver. Now it's a portable desktop.
Also, I found a palm rest from a Thinkpad T60 that was planned to be thrown away, it still had the touchpad and fingerprint sensor, I took them both and while I'm not able to test the touchpad, the fingerprint sensor is a standard USB interface and now I have a free fingerprint scanner I can use on any computer. Yes it's an old slide/line scanner but these still go for about $20 new
I found literally an entire PA system being thrown out by a local church, we're taking speakers, subwoofers, microphones and an amp, I picked it up and I still use it all today. I found it all 2 years ago
i totally agree! recycle hunting is fun. i personally just came back from a couple department stores with ewaste bins just out in the open. one was padlocked but luckily i was able to save a few things from both.
unfortunately i was unable to grab a samsung (looked like a samsung S4) but i was able to save some neat stuff. including a motorola G power 2021! just thrown away. im glad i could save it. i went back the week before and found 7 other phones. every week phones are just tossed into cans all across the country.
I've recently started working for a small business that buys laptops destined for landfill, we strip them down, completely refurb the plastics and upgrade the spec to max out the board, popularity is on the rise.
This video is so true. All my tech in my living room was found in the trash. Got a free 65 inch uhd 4K tv from trash. Buttons were jammed from a drop that was only issue. That was an easy fix. Got my asus rog laptop from curbside. Nothing wrong with it charger right there with it with the original asus rog mouse with it. List goes on. People like to toss or recycle things for no reason or as soon as it quits working and not even try to fix it.
whoever threw out that tv has way too much money
@@088O more money then brains lol. The box for the new tv was with it lol. They dropped old one jammed buttons so kept turning on and off and said screw this go buy another tv toss the old one.
This is one of the most valuable videos i've seen in very long time. Great work!
Glad to see Chris from the "Ultimate Recycler" here. He saves tons of stuff and does lots of repairs. And you learn about antique bottles and worms ;) Wonderful channel. Highly recommended.
Many thanks Sören! 😊😊
I saved an old colour CRT TV set from a rubbish bin. On off switch was faulty! Fixed it and made $50 cash to a motel owner
What's the best way to go about trying to save some of these tossed electronics? Do people just, say, call a local school and ask about electronics on their way out, or what?
I've tried looking into *where* to look to recover potential e-waste, but I haven't come up with much.
Often it's just observation I believe. You could also check if there's local eWaste centres and see if you can pick anything out of them
I got my current car for free. Previous owner lived in a place where repairs are costly, but the problem was just a leaking vacuum line, the fix was free as it meant a piece of metal pipe from the scrap pile. Been using it for ~3 years, all costs except fuel are still under the market value! And I can say that driving places only costs me fuel (and some free time spent on DIY repairs), large savings considering regular cost per distance.
Great video man, you have inspired me to learn how to fix tech and make content to 😁
I pulled a Roomba, a Dyson Ball and a Carpet scrubber out of my dumpster one day. All still work. Broken vacuums I usually try to fix and give to my mom because she breaks them often.
Hi Hugh jeffys and Happy Saturday Friend😁😁😁👍👍👍
my school donates decommissioned electronics to organizations and other schools, instead of just throwing them away. I'm really surprised more schools/orgs don't do this.
My school threw out a dell optiplex 7040, still an excellent machine with a decent i5 6th gen, 512gb ssd, and 8gb ram. I took it home a week ago and its great.
I need to find something like this for my sister
@@RowanBird779 i tried to do that because my school was getting rid of perfectly fine 2017 imacs and my school was cool with me having one of them but for some reason my parents said no but they were fine with her getting my grandmas 12 year old laptop that barely runs windows 7, which she now has
@@088O that fucking sucks, those iMacs could've had a life with you or your family but your parents denied.
@@RowanBird779 yeah
@@088O rip, that must of absolutely sucked. Luckily my dad is like an electronics god and I get free stuff from his workmates all the time.
I like these PSA type videos. You not only fix but explain why you do
Really love your content bro, keep up the good work!
This is so true, electronics and appliances made in the 50s an 60s were made to last. My mom has had to buy different blenders, washing machines, dryers, etc. and my granny has been using the same stuff for the last 60 or so years. Once companies realized there was profit in obsolescence they went bonkers on it. It should be illegal, frankly, it does not breed innovation or competition.
I recently dug out my old iPhone 6 (2014) and, after changing the battery, was surprised to find it is still a respectable daily driver. Some apps no longer support iOS 12 but their old versions or web app equivalents usually work fine.
I stopped and wondered why I had bought two new iPhones since then when I could have probably been using this the whole time or perhaps only upgraded once.
I don't normally salvage electronics off the road side because I'm worried about electrical issues but I have gotten some old furniture. I have a shoe rack that was in pristine condition, an old "big boy" chest of drawers that just needed a clean, and a gorgeous old lamp. My decor has an eclectic feel to it but it's unque and it's mine; it isn't some beige white nightmare like so many have turned their "homes" into.
I have found one way that prevents impulse purchases of new items is to lock your debit/credit card from accepting non-recurring online payments. It creates that one extra hurdle and makes you reconsider whether you actually need something.
I still use my iPhone 8. I got it the year it came out and there's really no point to replacing it. Still works fine, the only problem with it is that it has 75% of its battery life, but that could be an easy fix once I get around to doing it. I've also kept in in great condition too, no cracks anywhere and its always been cased.
My iPhone 6 is still fast and I keep it for a spare phone.
Fortunately, battery replacements on the iPhone 8 are not expensive. And, you won't get that Apple Genuine warning message when you decide to replace the battery.
It’s not just the love of consumerism that drives people to throw away their tech.
Most people HAVE tried to seek out professional repairs for things like phones and computers, but the price is often astonishingly high.
My wife took her 3 year old MacBook to Apple because the screen was cutting in and out - they quoted her over $500 for a fix. We eventually sought out a 3rd party repair centre and got lucky with the quote, but most people just won’t go to that extent.
I had a gigantic power surge at my house from a transformer exploding down the block, and it broke my on demand water heater, pellet stove board, ceiling fan, microwave, blender, toaster, and some power strips. I hate throwing stuff away, so I decided to check for board damage after the simple fuses didn't bring things back from the dead. I found that in addition to replaceable fuses, there were soldered varistors that had blown up, so I went to Digi-Key and ordered them for around $10 shipped. The fan remote board had something else wrong but not identifiable after replacing the varistor, but I resurrected the microwave and toaster for a few bucks. Haven't had time to inspect the other stuff. The hard part is that it's very time consuming and I have very little free time. Also I couldn't wait a month to inspect, order, and repair on the weekend with my core appliances - especially the pellet stove as my source of heat and my water heater. I wish I was better at diagnosing this stuff but it's all blind luck as nobody is giving out schematics. This stuff needs to be available to consumers.
Also my electric company told me to pound sand on $1600 worth of stuff, so that sucked.
I began salvaging old electronics in the 70s. I still do. Cell phone repair is not easy but, with your videos, I do the best I can.
Planned Obsolescence has led to this
Alongside greed
I work in a business that sells computer tech (amongst many other types of products) and I also do minor computer repairs on-site as well. I can't tell you how many people show up at my work with a computer thinking there's something wrong with it or simply wanting to just throw it away because it's gotten slow. Many times I've discovered the reason is simply because the computer has one or more outdated components, typically running and HDD instead of an SDD, which on Windows these days is the kiss of death. I've been able to repair so many of these kinds of computers with a simple hard drive upgrade to an SSD and the people are always amazed at how fast the computer has gotten, almost like it's a brand new machine. With the older machines that are running lower-power processors and/or RAM and HDD's, there's always the option of upgrading the hard drive to and SSD and, if there's an open slot or the RAM is swappable, a RAM upgrade. That again can breathe new life into the computer. What's more, so many people aren't even aware of the fact that you can take an older, slow PC and simply swap out the OS for either Linux (Mint or Ubuntu) or Chrome OS and it runs like new again. Given that your average person (at least in my neck of the woods) typically barely needs anything more than a browser for day-to-day, this is an option to greatly extend the life of a computer and keep it from becoming E-waste. I recently was able to save an entire family's set of 3 computers from becoming e-waste by simply upgrading the hard drives on all of their computers because they were all running HDD's and were as slow as snails. They were thrilled when they got them back because it was like they'd gotten brand new computers again for a fraction of the cost.
There's lots of options out there when it comes to extending the life of computers, but your average consumer is, frankly, too lazy or stupid to really look into what could be done with their machine and just pitch them before buying a new one, all the while complaining about how expensive it is and how "these things never last".
For my senior capstone project I ran an ewaste drive in my home town and repaired/ refurbished hundreds of devices before donating them to be resold at the animal humane thrift shop. The value of the items I donated was several thousand dollars. It was a great project and I couldn’t believe what some people would throw away.
That is the reason why I never throw out my old electronics. I still have my first ever smartphone - samsung galaxy s4 - all the way back from 2013 - in my cupboard and it's still fully working and in perfect condition
Can't agree more. Very few people talk about this in real-world, and rarely on the internet. Hyper consumerism in the name of good living standard is getting worse.
People also make fun of others if they don't agree with "following trends".
This is nothing but making customer an employee.
Its surprising that people simply throw e-gadgets in bin without even trying to look into the problem. Its waste of money and precious resources.
The most valuable thing I found being thrown out was ironically enough an Amiga. Also got my backwards compatible PS3 console this way.
1st generation ps3?
Best thing I found in e-waste was an LG 1080p ultrawide monitor. Had a short in the power supply circuit that somehow solved itself during when I tested it.
2nd best thing was a purely solar powered Casio calculator. Had a broken SMT capacitor. Fixed it and upgraded the large storage cap to 100uF, now I have an infinite solar powered calculator.
Most things in e-waste are perfectly fine and old or have only minor defects and are new. A pity what people throw away.
A lot of people don't understand why I try to find and fix up things like computers to the point where an entire corner of my bedroom is just computers for me to fix, I think this video explains it perfectly.
For the last 5 years or so I have been buying my computers used (refurbished) from a few sellers around the country , my last buy was a Lenovo Workstation Thinkpad , i7 ,Nvidea GPU 16 Gig Ram 240 G SSD ,DVD RW 15' Screen , Fingerprint login , Colour Calibrator built in , SD Reader and a Sim slot , $ 400 all up , now running Linux Mint , awesome , all you need.
Falou toda verdade !
I love these kind of videos. It took me several seconds to realize he was referring to a dumpster.
That’s why I like the Steam Deck. It’s got repairability in mind.
Eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhh, I dunno. I tried to upgrade the ssd but I ended up strippig the 4 self tapering screws in the middle. I dunno if I'd call the steam deck easily repairable. It's quite hard for a newbie to open up.
All I have now is 2 screwdriver sets and a 2230 512gb ssd that won't get used. At least I tried lol.
My dad work at my local college for years. Around 1998 when I started secondary school having a home computer was becoming a must but not everyone could easily afford one. My dad would buy all the old PCs for work and bring them home, then I would make usable machines by merging HDDs and RAM that I could sell/give to friends and people at school. They weren’t gaming monsters of course but at least they could use Office and emails.
I did that up until 2004-2005. Someday when I have a garage and enough space I’ll definitely start refurbing devices again, it’s fun and satisfying work.
This is why I love this channel.
This just upsets me! A fre weeks ago, my dad found a Hoover vacuum in the trash. He took it home. We fixed it up and now it’s perfectly working. Another thing saved from the trash. And my shop vac sounded wired. My dad wanted me to throw it out, but I put it on the end of our driveway with a free sign on it. And someone took it. As they say another man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
It's not about advertisements nor is it about people keeping up with trends. It's not knowing the quality of products that came before them.
Your message is specially strong if we compare with your last video from Cuba.
Congratulations on bringing such an important subject, Hugh
So true, the amount of kit that I have saved and pretty much given away to new homes over they years. Folk often say its not worth my time etc but I like giving kit a new lease of life
Great Video!! I'm living in a small village in Austria. Whenever I bring something totally broken to our recycling center, I also find something, which I take home. About 90% of the computers which I find there or other electronc stuff works perfectly fine. Some things just need some cleaning. Sometimes I just take stuff home to take electronic parts out of it - hoping that this thing is broken. But mostly it is not. I found already a perfectly working C64, an Amiga 500 in almost mint condition. A mac 6200 and many, many computers more. A PS3, which just was full of dust. After disassembling and cleaning it, it worked as new. I also don't understand, why this is not sold online. It is so easy to do that and it does not cost anything. Well... their loss, my gain 🙂
Hey Hugh I Am Your Regular viewer from india and i totally agree with you these days companies are also focusing on one time use and throw product once there was a time when brands tried to give more and more features life and quality to their products but its harsh that nowdays brands are making non lasting product just to make profit
I'm a student at the Turin polytechnic and I'm part of weee open, a group of students that is tasked with getting all the old hardware from the university, fix it up, and then we donate it to other schools in need and similar. We also do events where we invite people to bring their old devices to fix for free and have linux courses. Feels great knowing I'm part of a good cause.
I've had the same Broom for 20 years. This old brooms had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time.
British-born I grew up thousands of miles away from anything and we did not throw away items. There were toasters in my family from the twenties our automobiles were decades old, going back to World War II. The first thing I ever tried to repair rewinding the copper strands around aboard in an ancient toaster. I boast that it was a success but it was only near the end that I realized that that's flaky board was a form of asbestos! Lesson learned.
I never thought it was a good thing but in fact quite my bad that coming to the states for university I noticed everything was disposable.
Things were plastic, electrical boards were not soldered boards but much tinier microchips.
No one I knew at uni knew the trick to putting a lightbulb inside of a sock to darn it as I doubt any of them had ever mended anyting. To them it was so much more convenient to toss everything into a bin and buy another.
I never felt comfortable doing that and to this day I will fix things even if it means Googling instructions. It's not just to save money, but to keep everything out of landfills.
As much as I love these videos I just haven't taken the time to learn how to resurrect old technology. The most I've done is put a new battery in my iPod mini many many years ago.
I’ve seen it first hand, I have a friend who is a recycler, an IT waste management firm here in the U.K. I’m shocked at what companies and individuals throw out, it’s disgusting, the perpetual buying of consumer goods is shocking. However, here in the U.K. we don’t have roadside waste collection, as you do in Australia, we should. I also watch Ewaste ben a lot and he has the right idea, never mind Greta thornburg, ewaste recyclers should be given a platform. It’s a sorry state to behold.
Got a 94' Navajo that I'm fixing up. Lived most of its life in the south so it's not got a lot of rust, and the interior is all there (with the exception of half of the passenger side door panel). Gonna either rebuild the transmission or get a remanufactured one to keep it going as it slips/hangs from 1st to 2nd. It's a nice little 4WD SUV that otherwise would be in a scrap yard.
I'm a teacher and it shocks me to see how students keep buying anything that's new and shiny.
I taught a class on recycling and repairing things just to help environment a bit and told my students how I managed to repair a 2009 Macbook white that I use for music production and a 2006 Macbook Pro that I use for live music recording. Next day one student hands me her 1st gen iPad and told me "teach, I know you can do something with it other than keeping it in a drawer collecting dust." I managed to jail break it and now I use it to play old video games and also I use it as a guitar amp simulator.
I'm a musician as well and I constantly hear that "you need to get the most expensive and recent technology to get the best sounds out of your guitar," which, to be honest, I don't agree at all since you can make old stuff work just fine if you are not too picky and only care about making music and having a good time.
Now, want I want to do is repair a 2006 PC I got for $4, a friend's 2008 black Macbook and a 2nd gen iPad. I haven't found the time to carefully check them, though.
When I was in a Uni, one of departments in my school had like about 20 sets of PCs lined up in the hallway waiting for a garbage service to pick them up. I asked if I can have some of them, they said I could have all of them because the garbage collection charge $50 per set. So, I whipped out my truck and carry them all to my home, clean them all, and sell back for cheap. Up to 10 times cheaper than new set. I sold them back to fellow students who has limited budget to buy PCs.
Here In germany its a lot worse. People throw away everything. I found amd repaired a lot of stuff. A year ago, I found a AOC 27" Gaming Monitor. I believed it was cracked, but I took it home anyway. The monitor wasmt turning on. So I opened it and saw a puffed up capacitor on the backlight circuit. And guess what, the monitor was good again. It costed 500 Euro back then on ebay
You echo my sentiments.
One has to become less of a consumer.
Buy what you need, not what you want .
Hugh is my spirit animal.
Seriously though, my previous long term phone was a Nokia N85 that lasted 10 years before I retired it because I heard whispers that the 3G network was going to be scaled back, and needed to upgrade. I then used a few Samsung phones that I rooted myself, before getting my current daily driver, a Nokia 9 Pureview.
I've had it since mid 2020, and while it is having some issues, overall it works fine. Nokia have even said it can be checked if need be and repaired.
I also don't see the point in buying new if you can get more value for money from buying used. My phone is the only exception because I wanted a good Nokia and had had my eye on the 8 Sirocco and the 9 Pureview
I love going to recycling centers and thrift stores.
Some of my finds from recycling:
Perfect 27" Samsung curved display
Perfect iPhone 5c
Two GTX 680s which I use
Countless other cell phones
Thrift store finds:
Phones
Core i7 PC
$200 Lenovo laptop for $20
Vintage tower for $2
i5 tower for $10
$3 500gb WD NVMe SSD
$25 Gaming racing setup
$15 working Galaxy S7
$5 Galaxy S3 (works, has LineageOS)
eMacs (which I REGRET NOT BUYING)
All of these have been put to great use!!!
In germany it´s mostly because of the way phone contracts are structured. Most contracts that come with a phone will offer you a new one each year or every 2 years (sometimes for 'free') and ppl almost always take the free upgrade.
I saved a S9 3 years ago when a friend wanted to throw it away because the screen was broken, the battery weak and the backglass missing. The repair shop wanted 200 Euros for that job. I took it and repaired it with mostly refurbished parts (not the battery obviously) for 130 Euros. A almost brand new flagship phone for 130 Bucks? Gimme
Still rocking it today. Swapped the camera and battery (again) throughout the last years.
(also repairing the phones of my friends and family to save them from landfill)
My dad once found a decade old TomTom XL (grey bezel) GPS in a recycling bin in 2020. That was when I was really started to get interested into finding old tech for free or cheap. He brought it home, the screen was scratched but worked, the car mount was yellowed and didn’t stick and the battery held about an hours worth of charge. The OS had a glitch that meant that the time would always be midnight. We then bought a mini usb cable on eBay to charge it with and it turned on. Touchscreen malfunctioned sometimes but after cleaning it, getting rid of the previous owner’s info, it was not bad for free tech. I still have it to this day in a drawer plugged in all the time.
In Italy it's ILLEGAL to take anything from waste collection centers, so everything people throws away WILL be destroyed no matter what :'(
I worked as an pipe organ tuner. Mostly did restoration and tuning, but did work on a few brand new jobs.
In the UK there has been an increase of churches being converted into flats or the church just doesn't need the organ anymore. More organs are getting skipped. There are also an increase in churches from abroad taking these organs because some are not that old. It does cost a lot of money to get specialists to disassemble, repair then reassemble and tune. But it can still save the church roughly between 200-400 thousand euros/pounds on getting a brand new similar instrument.
Many times have I worked on an instrument that was on its last kegs to working again.
The guy behind the @LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER channel grabbed one and he's trying to make it work again...
@@josangoj78 I've watched a few of his videos. It's interesting what he's done.
Here in Europe, the EU wants to force technology companies to let users have the possibility to replace batteries as it was in the past. I hope that day comes quickly.
In September of '21 I went to my local recycling yard with my dad to throw away some trash (mostly cardboards and similar things) and I, as always when I'm there, went to look into the electronics container (ordinary ship container). There was one PC there. Looked kinda old but hey, let's check it out. Was a sharkoon case with a "bulldozer" imprint on the front. Side panels were missing so I took a peek inside. Blue Mainboard, huge 140mm air cooler, two sticks of ram populated out of four, dual fan fully shrouded GPU with two 6-pin power connectors and a 650W PSU. Sticker on the back of the GPU said HD6950 2G. "Jackpot" I thought to myself. Without thinking any further, I asked an employee if I could take it with me and I got a go. Took it home and dusted it out in my back yard using our air compressor. Plugged it in with monitor, keyboard and mouse. Before I could push the start button, I smelled something burning. Yanked out the PSU cable and took the Super Flower unit out. Back to the recycling yard with that one. I tested the PC with a spare 385W unit and it posted just fine, saying that it didn't find a boot device. Got a 128GB SSD, a 1TB HDD, a 550W PSU and swapped the case with the missing side panels for an AOpen Noveau that I modded to fit two 120mm fans at the bottom. Also upgraded the 8GB of RAM to 16 with another 8GB kit I had from my mom's upgrade.
So I got:
AMD FX 8150
AMD HD 6950 2GB XFX model
A decent gigabyte motherboard
A 550W PSU
A nice case with a casemod
A 120GB SSD paired with a 1TB HDD
All that for less than 100€. Was definitely a good new PC since back then I still used a P4 era PC with win XP. I sold it for 110€ half a year later since I switched to an AiO and then to a decent new gaming PC another half of a year later. Was definitely a good find there and I really thought that would fit to this video. Thanks for reading yall
Edit: for those who are interested, here's what the end product looked like :) imgur.com/a/8XIsF8h
Just last month I saved a Mini-PC, an All-in-One, three monitors and three harddisks. People did not need them anymore and were going to throw them away. It is the lack of competence to repair these things that makes people been drawn to consumerism. The Mini-PC had an issue with the software, the solution of the buisness owning it was: remove the hdd and relplace it with a new computer 🤯
Stuff I found at nearest trash, literlly 20 meters from my home:
- Working inkjet printer/scanner
- Almost working PC, about 20 yearts old, leaking capacitors on motherboard, I took working parts like PSU, CPU and RAM and left the rest for somebody else - disappeared in few hours
- Whole furniture for my garage
- Some other printers (disassembled them for parts like electric motors)
- Probably forgot after a few other things
And this is still in a country where homeless or almost homeless pepole take good care of anything that can be sold to a junkyard. Old fridges and TVs are usually stripped of all parts worth taking in less than hour after they were thrown out. These guys are sometimes faster than Formula 1 mechanics xD