Recycling

[mrnoisy]

Hi all just wanted to find out how you handle recycling within your school.

We currently send a lot of kit off to third part recycle companies but can't help feeling that we could make more money from our surplus/redundant items by selling them off to either staff/students or eBay etc.

Has anyone done anything like this ? I'd be interested to hear your views.

[Fazza]

When I worked at a College we sold off really old Desktop computers for £50 all that was on the PC was Windows and the Drivers. Everyone was told there was nothing else on the PCs and no support would be offered and they were 'Sold as Seen' with no warranty what-so-ever.

 

We had dozens of these and after a couple of days of the first few people buying them, we had people turning up saying "I know you don't offer any support on these, but can you help me with this...". We were overworked at the time (who in IT Support isnt?!) so had to politely remind them on the terms of purchase that they signed but they expected we'd make an exception for them.

 

This happened too many times so we stopped the sale of the desktops and returned any monies paid to us for ones that had not been collected yet and we insisted that everyone who had purchased one to return it to us for a full refund as it was far more hassle than it's worth.

 

 

You could always set up an School eBay account and sell them on eBay - sometimes you may find splitting them up for parts (CPU, HDD and RAM etc.) can create a larger income than selling the PC as a whole. Pro: you make some money Cons: it can take up a lot of time and dont forget about all the rules and regulations (like the Distance Selling Regulations where people can send stuff back for a full refund) and not forgetting dealing with items that dont turn up or faulty ones!

 

I did think about this myself and settled on sending it away to a WEEE company for free - although no money made, it frees up our time and saves on the hassle.

 

You could always set up your own website to sell the stuff on - you could always just set a website up as a catalog of what you have and then sell only to Education and just send out an Invoice to whichever establishment has purchased the kit.

 

It depends on the spec of the equipment you are getting rid of to be honest.

[garethEds]

We get Stone Computers to pick our stuff up. They do it for free.

 

GJE