Quote Originally Posted by hills View Post
That's a good breakdown on an average scrap PC tower.

Of course .... every place is different .... but i get a mixed bag of computer towers. Some of them are fairly new and others date back into the 1980's. The older ones are often richer in scrap value. The newer ones not so much so. I've had some Lenovos come in that are essentially a laptop board inside of a steel case. A lot of the other ones come in incomplete. It's common for the hard drives to have been removed these days.

It's often best to see if you can refurb the newer ones for better than scrap value if you can. It's not common, but a nice PC can go for 150.00$ A decent Mac goes for 300.00$ + and they practically sell themselves.

Ewaste is definitely a niche thing.



Afterthought:

I wonder if the lack of towers and desktops are simply a sign of the times. Folks started trending toward laptops, tablets, and hand held devices ages ago. It makes sense that that shift in consumer demand would be reflected in the waste stream years later.

That being the case .... we need to adapt accordingly ? Fewer towers to be had means we have to go on to something else to keep ourselves busy ?

It definitely could be a sign of the times. No one (in terms of consumers) wants or needs a desktop PC anymore. 10-20 years ago every house had a "computer room" or computer desk and a family computer. Sometimes even multiple computers per household. Now with tablets, laptop, and phones no one (except maybe people gaming on their PC, or doing serious editing/autocad work) needs or wants a desktop. So as far as PCs in the garbage, that is drying up and will continue to. Work places and enterprise customers are a different story, although they are still moving a similar direction.

Regardless, yes. People will have to adapt to whatever they can find and get a hold of. People who arent depending on scrapping as their main source of income dont really NEED to adapt.... might just need to find more hobbies lol