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We need more places like Portland, OR's Free Geek — it's a small warehouse full of surplus computer parts, you can drop off anything or walk out with everything
by Eric_WVGG 3y ago
We need more places like Portland, OR's Free Geek — it's a small warehouse full of surplus computer parts, you can drop off anything or walk out with everything necessary to build a whole PC desktop. The last time I was out there, they were bringing in whole palettes of old laptops and turning them into Chromebooks. Awesome stuff.
I'm currently sitting on a growing pile of brand new surplus cables, can't find anywhere similar in NYC that will take them. When I ask, folks say "just take them to some electronics recycling place." Recycling, as far as I can tell, at best means "shredding for excess gold and traces of lithium." I wanna see this stuff get used!
- JohnFen 3y agoI bet that there are many thousands of people in NYC that feel as you do. You might consider starting a hobbyist swap meet kind of thing. It might even be possible to cover any operating costs by selling used cables. In my area, there's an electronic recycling business that doesn't just shred everything -- they repair and refurbish as much as they can and sell it in their store. That's where I buy all my cables, because they have any cable you'd want for 1/10th the price. I was talking to the people working there, and they said that the cable sales alone account for nearly half of their revenue.