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.
Bob's Metals
- What it takes: Steel
- What it's worth: The value of the steel we recycle is approximately the same as the cost for our recycler to come in and pick it up. It's the same situation with plastic: a wash. One of our big dreams is to aquire a compactor which will greatly increase the density and value of our steel.
E-Recycling
- What it takes: Plastic.
- What it's worth: Same story as steel: nada.
Quantum
- What it takes and what it's worth:=
- Wire: .42/pound; ~$250/gaylord
- Power cords: .12/pound; ~$100/gaylord
- Ribbon cable: .12/pound; ~$60/gaylord
- Power supplies: .05/pound; ~$50/gaylord
- Hard Drives (minus controller boards): No data
- Keyboards: No payment
- Printers/scanners: No payment (note: Quantum does not consider these CBM, as we have)
- CBM (copper-bearing materials): .04/pound; ~$20/gaylord
- Aluminum: No data
- Stainless Steel: No data
- Fans: No data
- Speakers: No data
Hallmark
- What it takes and what it's worth:=
- Circuit boards: No data
- Controller boards (Hard drive): No data
- Memory: No data
- Processor bucket: ~$1,200/five gallon bucket.
- Gold finger bucket: ~$1,200/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.