15 Mar
2007
15 Mar
'07
1:29 p.m.
On 15 Mar 2007, at 20:12, Jules Richardson wrote:
Jim Battle wrote:
British charity shops wont take any donation of mains powered
appliances. This is due to the cost of safety testing needed before
resale. The only places ive found to be any good is the local council
recycling yard where you can "sneak" out a few items. Usually plenty
of amstrads cpc and wpc's there, but i found some Sun stuff last
week!!
So essentially it is a vintage computer magnet
attached to a wood
chipper.
I expect that's sadly a common thing. I've certainly complained on
here about my local (UK) computer recycler doing the same thing - and
it's sad to to all the vintage stuff there awaiting tearing apart
whenever I visit.
Realistically though to these people it's just a money-making business
moving resources around; faced with the immediate price they can get
for scrap versus the longer-term price from vintage collectors, it's a
no-brainer to them.
I understand that goodwill gets far more stuff
than can ever sell,
but to not even try is sickening. There was no hint of regret about
it from the clerk -- in fact, he was rather proud that they were
recycling bits of them vs tossing them whole.
Nothing we can do about it either, except make the effort to seek out
some of the sources of the vintage stuff and divert it before it hits
the "specialists". That's obviously easier said than done...
cheers
Jules