What's it worth?

Recycling: It's All About the Bling Bling

The purpose of this page is to keep tabs on what our recyclers have been paying and/or charging us for different materials. Curious volunteers, community members and Free Geeks in other areas may find this information especially illuminating. We also hope to use this information to do a better job projecting our financial picture month-to-month (as it often takes several weeks after a pickup before recyclers pay us, or bill us), as part of a continuing discussion about how to make recycling an efficient source of revenue for FG. Information will be sorted by vendor, and then broken down by material type.

The per-pound prices are from those listed on recent statements from our recyclers. The per-gaylord prices are estimates Richard and I came up with based on data from those statements.

Some of the basic information presented is redundant -- that is, it appears on other pages of the recycling wiki. This is because I receive so many questions on money matters as they relate to recycling, and wanted to create a stand-alone document that would be useful to many people. That said, I'm still new to wikis, so if you have any ideas about how to improve the organization or content of the recycling wiki (I'm looking at you, Freyley), feel free to add notes to the discussion page, to the articles themselves or to e-mail me.

CalBag

• Power supplies: .16/pound;
• Hard Drives (minus controller boards): .28/pound;
• Keyboards: .01/lb
• Printers/scanners: -.10/lb(we pay)
• CBM (copper-bearing materials): .01/pound;
• Aluminum: between .48/pound and .68/lb
• Fans: No data
• Speakers: No data

Number are not necessarily correct, prices change.

GreenWall

• What it takes and what it's worth:
• Wire: .?/pound;
• Power cords: .28/pound;
• Ribbon cable: .28/pound;
• UPSes: .14/lb

Hallmark

• What it takes and what it's worth:
• Circuit boards: 85 cents/pound or $1,500 for a ~2,000-pound gaylord
• Controller boards (Hard drive): No data
• Memory: No data
• Processor bucket ("High grade CPU" on statement?): ~$380/five gallon bucket.
• Gold finger bucket ("Low grade CPU" on statement): ~$260/five gallon bucket.

Above numbers are not true anymore. We are trying out new vendors for gold stuff, new number will come when we have them.

CalBag

• What it takes: Monitors
• What it's worth: We pay to have them picked up. Not excactly sure how much we actually pay, but it is less than with Total Relaim.

Calbag Metals

From the proposal:

• Ceramic processors: $10/pound
• Processors (with plastic housing): $1.50/pound
• Medium grade printed circuit boards: $.70/pound
• Memory modules boards with cips: $1/pound
• Motors: $.16/pound
• Power supplies: $.16/pound
• Hard drives: $.30//pound
• Power cords and ribbon wire: $.20/pound
• Insulated wire: $.50/pound
• Printers, keyboards and scanners: $.01/pound
• Monitors: $6 charge per monitor