"Another reason is to avoid old, but still servicable, items from
affecting the market by displacing new items. We often took old
instruments such as temperature controls as 'trade ins' for new ones
and permanently disabled them before trashing them. "

"Another reason that often happens is that no one in the chain of
command cares. "

Ah yes...two more reasons that I had overlooked but have seen in action
firsthand....thanks for contributing them

It just occcurred to me that we haven't heard from Gunner. Gunner,
while I may disagree on political issues with you at times I do highly
respect your scrouging abilities...care to comment where you get your
pickings?

TMT


Too_Many_Tools wrote:
I doubt it is the "Greenies" who cause senseless destruction of useful
items.

Logic would dictate that they would rather see them recycled or reused.

My experience indicates that it is usually the fact that the item was a
tax writeoff or a company fears liability, industrial spying or
employee theft so they would rather destroy than have someone else
benefit.

TMT

Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:23:54 -0600, Hamad bin Turki Salami
put finger to keyboard and
composed:

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:05:51 -0700, Too_Many_Tools wrote:

So where have YOU found your reuseable mechanical and electronic
components and what were they from?

There are some thrift stores where I live that sell used computers
for between $5 and $15. They range from 486's to Pentium III's,
as well as old Mac's. Most of these machines work, but I don't
need old computers, so I buy some for salvage parts. In a couple
of lucky cases, I've been able to use some of the parts to repair
broken music synthesizers. They also get millions of power supplies,
cables, and such junk there. I once picked up a pretty nice bench
power supply for a few dollars, and I got an oscilloscope too once,
some scientific calculators, etc.

And here's a sort of negative answer ... When I was a teenager
I had a string a terrible, frustrating jobs. One of them was doing
inventory in a warehouse for electronic and mechanical parts.
There were thousands of neat little parts in this place and my
job was to keep counting them. I also had to pull the parts that were
discontinued. So one day I'd pulled a whole bunch of these nifty
little things -- motors, LEDs, connectors, etc. -- and I asked the
supervisor where they were going. "We incinerate them when
they're discontinued," he answered. "Incinerate them? Well, can
I take them if you're just going to burn them?" I asked. "No,"
he answered without explanation. I remember thinking what a
big, stupid dufus this guy was, and how I'd never get anywhere
with him, but I went ahead and asked him why I couldn't take
them. "Because they're patented," he said. When I pointed out
to him that this had nothing to do with anything, he turned
around and shouted in a booming voice to the guy who dealt
with the incinerator, "Hey, Joe. We've got some discontinued
stuff here. Come get it and make sure it burns."

It's ridiculous, even criminal, but that's economics. When something
is written off, it must be scrapped in such a way that it cannot be
reused. If the greenies weren't just a useless bunch of tree huggers,
then maybe this could change.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.