Dumpster diver builds home lab Proxmox server from weekly landfill runs for SSDs, HDDs, GPUs, and even RAM — weekly e-waste raids net multi-drive Proxmox server and Asus ROG laptop

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'It's wild what people throw away these days' says successful tech scavenger.

County landfill trash to treasure picking
(Image credit: Tsuto on Reddit)

A tech enthusiast says that they managed to put together a home lab-worthy Proxmox server using PC parts scavenged from the nearby county landfill. Furthermore, Tsuto told fellow Redditors that they now routinely raid the dump’s separate electronics recycling area once a week. We can’t blame them; their gallery of liberated hardware includes plenty of valuable trinkets like SSDs, HDDs, GPUs, even RAM, complete laptops, and more.

The county landfill has a separate bin for electronics and I’ve taken to raiding it once a week to scavenge for parts for my labs.
 from r/homelab
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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • krysber
    The hospital I work at is closing, having been bought out by another company. I managed to pull a complete Cisco UCS 5108 chassis and 16 assembled blade servers, along with two Fabric Interconnects, along with some managed switches, sfp+ Cables, three EMC Recoverypoint servers that are now Proxmox servers, three laptops, two workstations, two thinclients, and a little marlin media PC. So much going to waste...
    Reply
  • bill001g
    Why do people believe anything posted to reddit. It is full of people who feel the need to brag and if anyone tries to challenge these the moderators delete posts because you are making someone feel bad.

    This has to be some rare case. Large landfill allow nobody even close to them. Massive machines and trucks everywhere. Even employees would likely get fired if they were walking around and collecting electronic trash. If someone puts electronics into the actual trash or a dumpster that also has trash it gets buried in the landfill. The lawyers make sure nobody can go digging in a landfill.

    There are of course rules about not putting electronic waste into the trash but most places that collect that separately actually deliver it to some company that either pays for it or at least agrees to take it for low cost and dispose of it properly. If someone takes stuff from these electronics recycle piles they are in effect stealing. The companies that agree to take this waste need to sell anything of value to recover the massive costs of getting rid of all the hazardous waste that has no value.
    Reply
  • Darkhands
    bill001g said:
    Why do people believe anything posted to reddit. It is full of people who feel the need to brag and if anyone tries to challenge these the moderators delete posts because you are making someone feel bad.

    This has to be some rare case. Large landfill allow nobody even close to them. Massive machines and trucks everywhere. Even employees would likely get fired if they were walking around and collecting electronic trash. If someone puts electronics into the actual trash or a dumpster that also has trash it gets buried in the landfill. The lawyers make sure nobody can go digging in a landfill.

    There are of course rules about not putting electronic waste into the trash but most places that collect that separately actually deliver it to some company that either pays for it or at least agrees to take it for low cost and dispose of it properly. If someone takes stuff from these electronics recycle piles they are in effect stealing. The companies that agree to take this waste need to sell anything of value to recover the massive costs of getting rid of all the hazardous waste that has no value.
    In the same way, why do people not believe relatively benign stories on the internet that are perfectly possible to be true? Companies let employees take used equipment all the time, even when it's technically against the rules. What makes a local dump any different? Some backwater dump manager may care less what the rules are, if it lowers his inventory and keeps his recycling area from overflowing.
    Reply
  • hyper0sphere
    One of my family members works at a place that destroys hardware in an industrial shredder. Exabytes of storage and ram have been crumbled to bits in the last decade. Why??? I don't understand! All the drives have that secure-erase function, and all the data is encrypted on the OS level and on the drive controller level! There's not even any sensitive material on them :(
    I wish my family member was allowed to take the stuff home.
    Reply
  • Grobe
    Well - company policy always override circular economy measures, especially when data security is on the line.
    Reply
  • FreeJunkFind
    It's wild how many writers solely use Reddit for content. Also they're not a dumpster diver if they're at the landfill/transfer station. Many have an area for citizens to drop off and "shop" things left by others.
    Reply
  • FreeJunkFind
    bill001g said:
    Why do people believe anything posted to reddit. It is full of people who feel the need to brag and if anyone tries to challenge these the moderators delete posts because you are making someone feel bad.

    This has to be some rare case. Large landfill allow nobody even close to them. Massive machines and trucks everywhere. Even employees would likely get fired if they were walking around and collecting electronic trash. If someone puts electronics into the actual trash or a dumpster that also has trash it gets buried in the landfill. The lawyers make sure nobody can go digging in a landfill.

    There are of course rules about not putting electronic waste into the trash but most places that collect that separately actually deliver it to some company that either pays for it or at least agrees to take it for low cost and dispose of it properly. If someone takes stuff from these electronics recycle piles they are in effect stealing. The companies that agree to take this waste need to sell anything of value to recover the massive costs of getting rid of all the hazardous waste that has no value.
    A lot of Transfer stations allow citizens to drop off items and search through what others have left behind. I've gotten several of my home repair stains, paints, and lights from one. I agree as well about reddit however all I see are "journalists" using it for fodder with no real effort.
    Reply
  • Darkhands
    FreeJunkFind said:
    I agree as well about reddit however all I see are "journalists" using it for fodder with no real effort.

    If you post as regularly to Reddit as I used to (~150k karma between all my accounts), search for your usernames online. You'd be surprised how many "articles" are written about your posts, which are basically just a retelling of what you posted.
    Reply