I am so mad..wasted equipment in the USA!

[Hatem Eldoronki]

OK. I work for the Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania. Yesterday, the man who takes the kitchen's trash out to the dumpster asks me if I wanted a 35mm camera and lenses that were thrown out to the dumpster area. So I said, "yeah right!"
Mind you, we went out together to that area, to find that someone grabbed the camera and lenses already, BUT, there was other stuff worth at least $4000 in the dumpster! Dark room equipment, a slide printer and supplies, close-up lenses, remote controls and release cables, some sort of rail thingie, a special 27" monitor, Ilford reams of 8x10 paper, a Nikon extension tube........all under 1 ton of rocks and old furniture. ALL BROKEN AND WET!!!
You see, the hospital laid off it's own photographer 5 years ago, and he left all this stuff behind.
I am soooo mad right now. :evil: :evil: :evil:

[Hatem Eldoronki]

Damn, I could really cry right now!!! :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

[stopbath]

Whomever ordered the disposal, and whomever executed the disposal of the equipment did not use any real form of intelligence. That equipment could easily have raised some bucks at an auction, or it could have been donated to a local photo club... Sigh. :(

[CyberDyneSystems]

Thats just a pathetic waste.. criminal IMHO.. whetehr it's camera gear or not.... just an act of criminal negligent waste!

[muscleflex]

but why are you mad? are you mad that you didn't get to the equipment in time? or mad that the hospital wasted all these?

thing is, if it's the latter - it happens all the time with companies and organizations! i've started saving old laptops that get thrown out from work and i then sell them on eBay :-)

[Tsmith]

but why are you mad? are you mad that you didn't get to the equipment in time? or mad that the hospital wasted all these?

thing is, if it's the latter - it happens all the time with companies and organizations! i've started saving old laptops that get thrown out from work and i then sell them on eBay :-)

LOL _ shes probably over it by now any way since its been almost 4 years ago - :lol:

[Jim G]

That is a frustrating waste of valuable resources - seems to happen not that infrequently with large organisations like hospitals, though...

One day at work I looked out the window to see enough furniture to fill a house several times being stacked out the back of the hospital... me needing some more bookcases was immediately interested. Before I finished my shift, however, workmen came along and purposefully damaged every single piece so that nobody else could take them and they had to get chucked. I was miffed.

[ibdb]

LOL _ shes probably over it by now any way since its been almost 4 years ago - :lol:
You could ask, but the OP hasn't posted anything here in over a year, and hasn't even visited in five months. :lol::lol::lol:

[muscleflex]

LOL _ shes probably over it by now any way since its been almost 4 years ago - :lol:


lol - oops, sorry. i didn't even see the date. i have no idea how i found this thread! and i even used to hate people who resurrect really old threads..now i'm one of those! lol
sorry! :oops:

[condyk]

lol - oops, sorry. i didn't even see the date. i have no idea how i found this thread! and i even used to hate people who resurrect really old threads..now i'm one of those! lol
sorry! :oops:

Don't worry mate there will be places all over the developed (sic!) world throwing out 300D's, 1Gb CF cards, and such ... the content of the skip may change but the principle still stands ;-)

[cdifoto]

Don't worry mate there will be places all over the developed (sic!) world throwing out 300D's, 1Gb CF cards, and such ... the content of the skip may change but the principle still stands ;-)

I toss my old broken or useless crap up on eBay but I suppose that's not much different. :lol:

[LBaldwin]

There are several reasons this could happen. Maybe they are BER. Or perhaps they have already been written off. But another more sinister issue may be afoot. Often theives will toss gear out i the trash so that they can come back at a later time and recover it.

The company I used to work for caught 3 engineers and two techs doing exactly that, laptops, routers and speakers, even two servers were found. The cops let them P/u the gear and take it home, videoed the whole way. Knocked on the door - C-YA to the pokey.

So I hope that your turned over the material to your security department. It you took it even from the trash it could be blamed on you.

[haisai-ojisan]

but why are you mad? are you mad that you didn't get to the equipment in time? or mad that the hospital wasted all these?

thing is, if it's the latter - it happens all the time with companies and organizations! i've started saving old laptops that get thrown out from work and i then sell them on eBay :-)

Wow...this is an oldie from the past.
It's true though, it does happen all the time and I see it on atleast a weekly basis.
Sometimes, the time and effort may not be worth the cost if it was sold.
In a lot of cases, it's easier and cheaper to scrap it.

[Grace]

It's just like the home make over shows on TV... I realize that sometimes things cannot be saved but most of the time old stoves, dishwashers, sliding glass doors can all be donated to Habitat for Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/). It drives me insane to see people remodel and throw out the "old" stuff just because its "ugly" but perfecty usable.

[ssim]

I agree it is a waste, there is so much that goes in dumpsters that could, at the very least, be recycled. I worked for a multi national company with some 40 thousand employees. They decided to go with a new color scheme and started to replace all the custom made 3 ring binders. The old ones were ordered to be trashed. The employees couldn't take them home, they wouldn't let them be donated to a cause that could have used them because they had the corporate name and logo all over them. It really peeved alot of people. We were talking about thousands of these things.

I know the frustration of trying to get rid of darkroom equipment. I have tried to sell mine with no luck. The local auction wouldn't even take them. I tried two camera clubs and they were in the phase of shutting down their wet darkrooms. So mine is sitting in the garage boxed to try at a yard sale this spring.