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.

Denton Plastics

• What it takes: Plastic.
• What it's worth: unsorted - nada / sorted - about $.20/lb

CalBag

• What it takes and what it's worth:
• Wire: .42/pound; ~$250/gaylord
• Power cords: .19/pound; ~$100/gaylord
• Ribbon cable: .19/pound; ~$60/gaylord
• Power supplies: .19/pound; ~$50/gaylord
• Hard Drives (minus controller boards): .15/pound; $450/gaylord
• Keyboards: No payment
• Printers/scanners: No payment
• CBM (copper-bearing materials): .04/pound; ~$20/gaylord
• Aluminum: .48/pound; $240/gaylord
• Stainless Steel: No data
• Fans: No data
• Speakers: No data

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.

Total Reclaim

• What it takes: Monitors
• What it's worth: Each shipment puts us approximately $3,000 in the red. Need data on how much Total Reclaim charges per monitor (versus the $10 we charge), and whether there are additional charges (fuel and labor for the trailer swap) that offset this.

Calbag Metals

I have met several times with a representative from this company to discuss whether they are interested in doing business with Free Geek. They are. Here are the prices they have offered us for the materials they take. They also have assured us a 24-hour lead time on pickups and payment within 10 days (we are getting neither of these things from Quantum, Hallmark or Total Reclaim). I would like to work with them, but I'd like staff to discuss whether we want to send them all the materials we process that they take. For instance, if we decide to start sending monitors to Calbag, we will not have a monitor trailer in our parking lot and will lose that storage. But because they have a shorter lead time and accept more materials than any of our current recyclers, this may not matter so much. 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