One Man's Trash Options

[Critter]

I saw an item on the news about some guy who had a multi-million dollar company based on salvaging semiconductor parts from electronic/computer equipment thrown in the trash by companies. The guy who created this company stated that he was getting so much material from the trash that he made arrangements with some companies to just pick up their trash computer equipment (so that he didn't have to dig the stuff out of the garbage bins).

Since I saw this on tv, I just assumed that everyone was aware of this and that every company in Manhattan had some ARRANGEMENT with some beauch to pick-up their trash. Apparently, I was wrong on this point.

There are certain "routes" in Manhattan that I always seem to take and I have noticed a number of companies throwing some very useful stuff in the trash on my routes.

Most of the time the problem is that I am not expecting anything useful to be in the trash while I'm walking down the street. I usually have no way to actually carry most of the stuff I find home. I guess the solution is to find out what schedule these people are on so that I have a handy little cart to load up.

Some of the things that I have found in the trash:

( a ) what appears to be a new unused HP Color Deskjet printer;
( b ) new unused software, it was about one rev out of date, but still it was new and unused;
( c ) a box of printer-ready labels;
( d ) an Apple Lisa Computer; this one wasn't actually thrown in the trash but it was about to be thrown in the trash;


As far as I can tell, there must be some kind of legal/insurance requirement that certain equipment that a company records as "trash" actually be thrown in the trash and not given to employees. When I was walking down the street and saw a new apparently never used HP Color Deskjet printer in the trash and picked it up, the company employees who had thrown the printer out seemed pissed off that they couldn't take the printer themselves.