In reply to the Walmart guy, my partner used to work at ASDA (that's Walmart in the UK. Walmart actually own them, I mean)
One night I was picking her up and there was a huge industrial skip (dumpster) out back, filled with castoff metal shelving. I asked the numpty (local slang for any employee of low salary, intelligence and imagination)if I could take a few bits for my workshop. He said no and explained that it would lower their salvage price.
I figured he was being a pr*
* but got back in the car and forgot it.
Lo and behold! The next day I happened to be there picking up some milk and other stuff and I watched the day manager hand the salvage guy a cheque for £310 to take the stuff away! And this was like a 30 ton skip! Current price for scrap steel here is around £50 per ton and the truck was from a salvage yard 4 miles down the road.
I wonder exactly what that truck runs on if they need to charge £310 to move over £1000 of steel 4 miles?
On the subject of local dumping. We live quite close to the nearest dump (about a mile) so quite often take stuff down there rather than leave it for the collection guys, who often won't take it if it's not bagged anyway.
There's a guy there (we call him Ratboy, due to his being dentally over-endowed) who keeps his beady eye on us whenever we unload my van, cos he's sure we are dumping commercial waste. In this area you need to pay for a licence from the local authority every year if you are a business that routinely dumps anything related to your work. The licence is about £100, I'm told.
Naturally, I DO occasionally slip in the odd item of commercial junk (mostly old furniture), but...
It just makes me laugh because I regularly watch the local pipe fabrication company drop off a ton or so of steel swarf and small offcuts of tube.
Firstly, I'm amused because they NEVER get asked for their permit, as all their waste goes in the same 'Ferrous Metal Only' skip.
Secondly, I remember the ASDA incident and know why they are regularly chucking £50 away. It's cheaper than paying someone to collect it!
And Thirdly, I KNOW FOR A FACT that they don't HAVE a commercial disposal licence, because I asked the owner of the company one night in the pub.
Seems funny that I get the third degree every time I go there in the van, but they never get bothered. Could it be that West Pennine Recycling (who run the dump for the local authority) don't really give a rat's a
* about permits if you're dumping something they can make money off.
At our refuse disposal centres, too, you find those lovely 'No Scavenging' notices. A curious fact about this, though, is that you can apply to the local authority to get a licence to scavenge (again, about £100 per annum.)
I was vaguely interested in this and asked Ratboy. He informed me, with a toothy smirk, that you had no chance of actually being granted one of these licences unless you got it endorsed by one of the council employees at the dumps. It was fairly obvious from his tone that there was more chance of my being raped by a gang of nuns.
As I've quite often seen VERY useful items of steel, plumbing and mechanical junk lying around in carefully organised piles in the place, it seems quite obvious that the attendants themselves are making off with whatever they fancy. One is forced to wonder whether they've got a permit?
Oh, and lastly! Work out this mentality?
I used to work for the RAF, as an electronic technician on radars, command and control computers and suchlike. We had a major computer upgrade done and all the old machines were destined for the skip. I asked if I might take a few bits and pieces, to build some specialised test equipment for my workshop. I was told yes, certainly, no problem. The company that was collecting them charged by weight, so if I wanted to reduce that I was welcome.
I was aware that it could be construed as theft if I took anything before the stuff actually got skipped, so I watched patiently. Sure enough, the computer guys came out mid afternoon with a couple of pushcarts full of scrap towers and monitors. They deposited them in the skip and left.
As I was leaving, I went over to the dumpster, selected three complete towers and a couple of newish looking monitors and took them home.
Once I took the cover off the first one, I discovered that every wire from the motherboard to the rest off the machine had been neatly cut. The monitors had had their video plugs snipped off and neatly taped to the back of the case.
The next day I asked the computer services guy, Steve, why this had been done. He showed me the memo, straight from the Ministry of Defence HQ in London. It instructed that, while no parts should be removed, all scrapped equipment should have it's storage blanked and be rendered unusable before disposal.
Intrigued, I rang the appropriate department and, posing as one of the IT staff, asked for clarification of the memo. The 'crat on the other end told me, with a chuckle, 'wouldn't want anyone to get any use out of them, would we, old boy? After all, it's the taxpayers' money, isn't it?'
WHY??? surely, if the government was THAT concerned about the potential waste of taxpayers' hard-earned cash (unlikely in a country where we pay around $6.00 per gallon for petrol due to our taxation policies,) they could have donated the 48 outgoing machines (all of which worked fine) to one of the grossly underfunded schools in the area. It's a point of fact that I actually have more computers in my house and workshop than a local school of 560 kids does. I know, because my kids go to that particular school. (There wasn't much choice, it was the only local school with spaces at the time)
And people wonder why we are building a house in the middle of nowhere with a 'funny windmill,' PV panels and a homebuilt used vegetable oil generator for power. Rude not to, really!
