Dumpster Diving an E-Waste Centre

[@Keanu252]

last week we threw out some old latitudes and elitebooks at work and hugh jeffreys hissed at me from behind some garbage cans

[@johnchungmintat8716]

I don’t mind having one for personal use

[@HEYYYTIGER]

Well you probably shouldn’t make a big deal about it he’s a great person

[@includespecialcharachters]

This is a joke, right?

[@frstwhsprs]

​@@includespecialcharachtersWell? What do you think the comment is?

[@fredleggett923]

@@HEYYYTIGER r/whoosh

[@Papazulu77]

So the iPhone with the Phillips screws, back when that phone was current, iFixit sold a kit called the “iPhone 4 Liberation Kit” that contained a pentalobe driver, 2 replacement Phillips screws, and a Phillips screwdriver.

[@CaptainRex332]

It would be a dream come true if a E waste facility opened up near me

[@zakarylakota]

Same. I get so jealous of pc builders being able to get super duper cheap pc parts right down the road. It would just be so nice

[@notsoseagatey]

omfg same

[@gteixeira]

Hoarder lol

[@mukadammustafa9394]

Yes 💯 agree with you

[@xdasdaasdasd4787]

I couldn't even find any information about such services here on Japan :(

[@griffin1366]

My cousins workplace was getting rid of all their 2019 stuff. Whole bunch of SFF office PC's, laptops etc. for free. They offered me 5 of each but I only took 1. Got a free office chair too! Hadn't even been sat in. Insane how much waste there really is.

[@AzrethK9]

2019 is insane. The computers I replaced at work this year where mostly from 2009 to 2014 models. Most of them where still working fine, but it's getting harder to keep them running.

[@griffin1366]

@@AzrethK9 Time is money for them. No idea how many they bought but $150-$250k for new PC's is nothing.

[@DaXande135]

I also got some 2018 Elitebook convertible laptop and soon will get a G7/G8 Elitebook since they would otherwise get thrown away.

[@AzrethK9]

​

[@AzrethK9]

​@@griffin1366 ​Indeed, we replaced a few nearly 15 year old workstations for brand new ones. It took around one year in planning, 25 k in software licenses, technician hours und material, over 10 k in loss of production and many hours on our site to get things running again as fast as possible and a new workstation for like 1 k. Other systems are much more easy to replace. It's then only around 1 to 5 k in total for one. The sweet spot lays around 10 years. But sometimes it isn't even possible, companies go bust, hardware interfaces don't exist anymore, 64 bit drivers where never made and so on.

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

I miss diving E-Waste but the recycling facility where i live does not allow people which don't work there to look through stuff anymore since an accident. There are weird insurance laws.

[@flyaway6671]

Not weird at all, people getting injured on your premises is your responsibility. E waste has a lot of broken things with sharp edges, leaking batteries etc.

[@Stealth86651]

The sunglasses and hoodie bit was really appreciated. Always gotta throw your hood up when gaining root.

[@Zerbey]

I laughed, I know how easy it is to reset a password in a UNIX environment but to people watching it looks like you're some kind of mega hacker.

[@tigersusyt]

My ewaste place will soon be flooded with windows 10 computers

[@bloxyarii]

That probably would work fine! Get as much as possible 😭

[@tigersusyt]

@bloxyarii yep, i will And then have the craziest setup lmao

[@meetv7700]

Get them, it's hilariously easy to install windows 11 on unsupported hardware.

[@tigersusyt]

@meetv7700 unless it's a 12 year old macbook, that has bsod loop in w11 Or my desktop that has issues with 11 sometimes

[@meetv7700]

@@tigersusyt I believe you're talking about windows 10 computers.

[@superhavi]

I'm always hapy to see someone being able rescue electronics from e-waste centers. In my country most of the e-waste recyclers do not give people the opportunity to rescue stuff from the e-waste.

[@majik732007]

1:40 OMG! That last laptop in that stack has a HD-DVD rom drive?!?!?! I would have bought that just for that drive alone specially for only $5!

[@edwardfletcher7790]

Yeah that's a rare find !!

[@michaelmannel9534]

As of October 14, 2025, there will be plenty of powerful PCs in the electronic waste that cannot run Windows 11. These computers can still be used perfectly with alternative operating systems.

[@Poita316]

I work at a recycling company and the amount of e-waste we handle on a weekly basis is bizarre. And the amount of recent devices is crazy because everyone gets a new device every 1 or 2 years. Don't get me wrong, we get paid handsomely for kk that e-waste but seeing what people throw away is astonishing.

[@RanenPo]

I started laughing at 8:10, and again when you said the battery was having an identity crisis, that was just too funny

[@dylanduffy522]

I work for a large ewaste company in Sydney in ITAD and these devices are so plentiful. It's cringe how much we deem as recycling. We need more people like Hugh.

[@legado804]

How many gaming laptops are disposed of, and how new are they?

[@afinno]

Does your company offer second chance access for $5 each like the place Hugh got these devices from?

[@dylanduffy522]

@@afinno unfortunately the business model is geared more towards high value assets and bulk sales for scrap

[@jatie9]

Which place? I'm in sydney and would definitely check it out

[@DMack6464]

It'd be worth it to open up the business to small-time folk such as a lot of the viewers of this video, I'm also in Sydney, but would prolly only be interested in a few laptops, half a dozen at most

[@JerziTBoss]

The Thinkpad was really nice find. It's from the older gen where they were built like tanks. I still use mine for web browsing even though it's one gen older than the x240... Good quality batteries are still available for older models of Thinkpad you can get and they are not that expensive either.

[@nup5]

I have an Edge E531. 3rd gen Intel. I swapped the CPU for an i7-3632qm, a quad core mobile. Still handles everything I throw at it. Sure, it suffers due to slower DDR3, and only 16gb max (motherboard doesn't support more), and only a single SATA 3.0 slot... but I plan to use Rufus and put 11 on it once 10 runs out of security patches. (Yes, I have Linux installed alongside it)

[@RanenPo]

5:37 also note the X240, X250, X260, and X270 chassis are very weak and have a fatal flaw. If you lift the laptop with one hand, the motherboard may bend such that the RAM slot actually bends enough to cause a BSOD. Search online for it, well documented problem

[@yotoprules9361]

why would you lift it with one hand anyway?

[@0w3nn]

Really ironic

[@caromac_]

@@yotoprules9361 Why would you lift a laptop that small with both if you're using and carrying it?

[@yotoprules9361]

@@caromac_ because I don't want to break my laptop?

[@phyrexiancoffee6324]

Wish I could find a place like this in Louisville, KY. None of the E-Waste places around here do anything beyond instantly processing their E-Waste. I'm a huge believer in "computers never become useless, simply change uses".

[@usagold8]

Most modern ThinkPads have a mini-PCIe/M.2 slot for a LTE/3G card. If I recall the mobile card slot only provides USB or maybe PCIe x1. NVMe SSDs require PCIe x4.

[@すどにむ]

Lots of WWAN cards only need USB but also needs SIM slot, while most WLAN cards need PCIe x1, and SSD slots need either PCIe x4 or SATA. So a laptop always* has one WLAN slot and it always has PCIe, while WWAN slot sometimes lack PCIe, SSD slot always has SATA, and "multi-purpose second slot" may have mixes of PCIe x1, x4, USB, SATA, SIM slot, Wireless kill switch relay input, whitelisting requirement and so on.

[@TheSpotify95]

Well worth it. I'd love to visit an e-waste recycler like this one day - I'd be in my element buying stuff and saving it! Even if not completely working, some devices are still worth it for the parts.

[@RanenPo]

Me too lol, I would have bought out the entire place, the deals are just too good

[@he60]

For the blackberry, i also have a bold and it have a tendency to consume slowly the battery down to 0% by itself, and after, it wont reconize it To power it again, take a lithium bms or a bench power supply or anything around 3.7 -> 4v with a current limit feature and set the current pretty low like 200mA, let the battery charge manualy up to maybe 3.5+V and put it in the BB again, plug it and it should start again ^^

[@theflavianosiblingsexplora914]

Great job Hugh! I appreciate on how you salvage devices on a e-waste center and make it usable again! Also you're lucky that the ThinkPad X240 you have got is the high-end model. P.S: My dad and I were given a sack full of ThinkPads that are being scrapped, mostly T440p, T450s, T460, X201, and an X230 tablet. All of the models are configured with i7 processors, and we managed to get 4 T440p, 1 T450s and the T460 to function in perfect condition. The rest of them needs further repair, and I have used the repaired T450s (with an i7-5600U, 20 GB DDR3, 240 GB? HDD, with touchscreen) as my daily driver and as a Wii emulation powerhouse (since I have a Wii Remote Plus with me.) If you disliked the X240 clunkpad, you can opt to replace it with the regular X250 touchpad with driver modification.

[@faqihudinn]

14:12 The laptop has Windows 8/8.1/10 logo on the keyboard, but it has Windows 7 Sticker on the palm rest, strange

[@MLGPRO-dx8fg]

Enterprise customers could order the machines with Windows 7 for the longest time because their software wouldn't run on newer versions. Kinda like how tons of ATMs still shipped with XP Embedded until like 2013 lol

[@WeatherMan2005]

my dell latitude E6540 is like that

[@JerziTBoss]

My old Thinkpad was like that. In case of my Thinkpad it was because the laptop originally shipped with Windows 7 but there was Windows 8 upgrade disk included so I could pick if I wanted to use the laptop with Windows 7 or Windows 8. My guess is that the X240 is similar situation.

[@Struwex]

0:45 that's the lg Prada wich is actually pretty rare , had one too

[@BredBordLights]

Found one here aswell

[@BredBordLights]

I volenteer at this ewaste center, super good finds, s8’s s9’s even found a google pixel 4, and some very new pc parts, I go here every week and never dissapoints (Edit: Also the only reason I started volunteering was because of the video from earlier, I’m so glad that shared a video about it, I hope to see him one time there, favourite Channel and place to go every Wednesday and Saturday (:

[@man_eating_monkey]

What’s it called?

[@voltare2amstereo]

3g shutdown devalued near EVERY phone thinkpad's are the ultimate windows machine

[@diartaha9245]

I thoroughly enjoyed the way you made this video glad to see you got the spark back

[@Tamay.]

This is literally a dream come true. Too bad there arent any ewaste facilities here and the junkyards wont let you take things.

[@Firexploit]

I used to work at a place where I had to throw away like 600 Laptops that were going get destroyed. I secretly took two of them home with me. Luckily no one noticed it :D

[@foxyfoxfilms]

This is literally the most interesting video from Hugh Jefferys in about two months. Nice! ❤

[@06howea1]

Wish the UK had places like this

[@asicdathens]

In my work as SW dev I still have an old 2019 Dell precision 7530. Instead of a new laptop (I have in home and work a thunderbolt docking station with 2 monitors) I asked for 128GB of RAM that I installed and waiting for a new battery (6 cell) and new M.2 SSD. I'm running Widows, 1 wsl Ubuntu and 6 docker containers with no issues for development ( storage is running low)

[@finnbianga4189]

that thinkpad is a great find! so good to see it working again

[@theshadowman1398]

Love these type of places. Just last week brought my second gen SE to my local Apple Store to replace the battery. Now my phone will last for another 2 to 3 years.

[@kirbyfantheapplefanboy2021]

"make itunes great again" best line ever

[@usedmacbook]

i honestly love looking through ewaste like this.

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

"The fan not connected to the heatsink" - Usually it's form follows function. Apple Engineers: We only follow form, no function. //typo

[@detect1ve6903]

What e-waste centre is that?

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

Hugh nice you found a thinkpad those laptops are robust!

[@_Midori]

9:54 MiGA - Make iTunes Great Again!

[@bfapple]

I thought coverflow still exists?

[@alot_of_ducks]

lol

[@alot_of_ducks]

Was thinking the same thing

[@schleepyfr]

I LOVE THESE VIDS PLS KEEP POSTING THESE

[@Cyba_IT]

That Thinkpad is an amazing find and as you may already know the iPhone 6s is the oldest iPhone that can still be updated to their latest OS, not for long though I'm sure. Our E-waste centre is sadly out of bounds for "scroungers" but I get my fix from thrift stores and clients giving away their old gear. My house is too full actually so it's kind of lucky we can't raid the E-waste as well. 😂 Cool vid man, love this sort of stuff. Greetings from NZ.

[@Mini-z1994]

Rescued plenty of modern computer parts & some older collectible & still usable stuff here as we swing by the recycling center pretty often at work. Where people can throw out electronics & everything else in general but it's not broken down into smaller pieces like your place with the electronics. Other then there being a bin for devices with non removable batteries in another area with the TV's, CFL & loose batteries. My test rig consists of a MSI X299 plus motherboard, intel's high end desktop platform with an I9 7920x processor so 12 cores, 24 threads. Newest working graphics card I've found is a GTX 1660 TI out of a discarded hp pavilion gaming pc where i also grabbed the processor which was a ryzen 7 3700x. The two highest end power supplies I've found are a Corsair HX1600i & an AX1500i which were without modular cables. And ofc i didn't have the square power cable these use but with how powerful these are. I'd say it was worth the cost buying a full modular cable kit for both to share. Later in the year the cables for one of these power supplies showed up so now i have a complete set between both of them heh. Got a laptop with a slightly malfunctioning keyboard & a cooling fan on order for it but its an Acer Nitro with the intel I7 7700hq, 16 gb ram, 500 gb m.2 ssd & a gtx 1050 ti, had no charger but it kicked to life with a half jank solution to force some power into the battery so i sourced a used charger for 10$. Gave away the Ryzen 7 3700x with a pretty basic Asus B450 motherboard, 1x8 gb 3000 mhz ddr4 stick & 1x 2666 mhz ddr4 stick as well as a top down blower Noctua cooler i simply bought the AM4 mounting kit for to a coworker which still hasn't put it together into his pc, he's currently using a I7 3820 i believe which is ofc quite old at this point so it will be a decent upgrade to use for him later. Built my dad a mini itx rig with a a strix b250i motherboard 2x8 gb 3200 mhz ram from my current pc as i upgraded to 2x16 gb a few months back & the cpu is an I7 6700 non k processor, a 240 gb m.2 ssd & a 480 or 500 gb sata ssd & a cheap deepcool cpu cooler for like 20$ together with the gtx 1660 ti made for a pretty good system.

[@RVTerruvia]

4:48 that is the slot for the optional WWAN card. The card is responsible for cell network connectivity. It is common to see them missing in laptops that DO have SIM card slots, hence the disconnected antenna plugs near the port. Its an optional feature, and rather than make multiple models, they just don't install the card. You can get one, log the IMEI and activate it on a network if you want, but I just used my empty slot for a secondary drive.

[@ApoloDeLeo]

the Huawei is the first model of the p smart series from 2018, it was designed to bring the attention of the younger people like teens

[@dezhocob]

8:11 He has finally assumed the mantle of... The Hackerman! Behind, his power is unmatched!

[@alexiafox74]

Great haul! For the BlackBerry, something you may want to try is to see if the phone boots without a battery. But to do that, you need a 15W charger (such as a Samsung adaptive fast charger), and to plug the USB cable into the phone. Without the battery, it usually doesn't start up. But, the power of the fast charger has given me success in the past for booting up devices which had dead batteries.

[@Gerkozielman]

Hee, Sherlock 8:09 do you think apple is falling for that campaign slogan 9:53 ? (HAHAHA) i just bought the i test app of yours for only 1 euro. very handy app !! And nice pickup place, sometimes i wish they had a place like that here in Holland too. but i believe you have look under the radar ;-) Real nice video Hugh !

[@Velocity_AU]

Oh hey, good to see the eWaste Connection Yeronga site! You've visited 2 out of the 3 eWaste Connection sites now, last one is the one I occasionally do casual work at, fixing and refurbishing old laptops, the North Booval site. Last week I was fixing up some oldish Dells we just got in from a school, and already sold some to a up and starting school, im excited to get back to finish the rest of the laptops, but my other work as a 2d animator is taking priority, that and I got Covid, so Im not gonna spread that.

[@Waskapmutni]

We got Hugh Jeffreys going Hackerman before GTA 6.

[@CaptainRex332]

4:00 idk why but I find it so funny that you don’t have that cable since it’s very common

[@Yanxbr]

"An unusual assortment of ports" hurts a lot knowing these were all once so common on laptops..

[@kyliandc9276]

I'm pretty sure the Yoga has integrated memory alongside the slot so it should work without one in

[@edwardfletcher7790]

I'm still using an X220 with 16gb as a daily use machine. 👍😁

[@hackerz54]

bro this is not waste, this is gold

[@CaptainRex332]

1:30 dang that’s awesome if I were there I probably would’ve bought most of them

[@joecool4656]

When I was a kid I remember this being expensive and cutting edge

[@pum6454]

it's nice that people like to rescue e-waste but unfortunately some things are far from being able to be saved, that's why recycling is so important, many places take apart unsaveable electronics and strip them down so they can extract important components, if you have very obsolete, broken electronics, take it to a recycling plant

[@randomyt666]

There's some really cool stuff I saw. I actually got some similar laptops from school, including some ThinkPads, a Toshiba satellite 1110, 2 HP-Compaq NX6325s and some other interesting tech like a camera with a floppy drive and a VoIP gateway. I'd love to have an ewaste centre locally as I like diving through old tech piles.

[@Dwall44]

Love this video! Would love to see more like this in the future!

[@CarlazorTheFourth]

recently i've found a dyson v8 in an ewaste bin, all that was wrong with it was that the reservoir or whatever its called wasn't closed properly, after closing it properly it worked again, after buting a charger and some nuzzles for it, i could use it again, i've also found multiple phones that worked straight out of the bin, such as a sony xperia L1 a samsung a10, a Samsung a5 2017, a samsung a5 2016, an iPhone 6s (locked sadly) and a microsoft lumia 435, i've also found a Denon DP200 usb on wich the belt wasn't even installed, also a few tower computers that had nearly nothing wrong other than missing hard drives, i've even saved a few old phones such as a blackberry q10, blackberry bold 9900 (the same one you bought), Crazy what people throw out these days.

[@mrwibble70]

That was a Huawei PSmart from 2018 or2017 Hugh. My first Huawei. I still have it as a spare if needed in an emergency.

[@CaptainRex332]

Honestly that thinkpad would be a great candidate for turning into a desktop and possibly turn the display into a external one

[@moth.monster]

Crazy to see a laptop like that Thinkpad in e-waste... I have one like that which I thought was still pretty new!

[@sparksfly13]

oh please never reset that MacBook Air!!! i have never been more jealous of an older mac...i have so many already but they all came reset!! having a timecapsule of things would be so cool...especially old apps, something i could so use!!!

[@NETPROJECTS67890]

Wish I had an ewaste center near me 😭

[@squirtle88]

8:09 hacker mode engaged xD

[@-validites-]

Already looking good from the thumbnail

[@DiariesByAn]

Really amazing! I love your videos!

[@waterup380]

Once the E-waste is loaded into a trailer, it becomes untouchable, and the reasons for this are unclear. That's Manitoba Canada for you

[@CamelCasee]

Same in parts of the UK

[@Leylandcars123]

What a steal for that prices love E-Waste,Yesterday I was at my local city dump and found and saved an old early 2000s CRT TV,got home, plugged it in and it works, don't know if it'll get video in though,i intend to use it with my PS2,such a waste to throw out something perfectly working, what people throw out nowadays is amazing

[@aaroncheah2088]

ThinkPads are worth saving. Plenty of new parts sold online. I restored many ThinkPads bought from ewaste over the years. The oldest being the X61 Tablet and newest being the T590. Yoga only worth as parts donor. U can salvage the LCD screen, RAM, SSD or HDD and keyboard. Most parts shared with ThinkPad of the same generation.

[@R3TR0J4N]

E-waste centers are crazy ive heard people recovering and restore great peripheals to budget builds.

[@mrfoxesite69420]

9:32 if you made this in 2016 that ariana grande lore would be there...

[@s.moorefilms3760]

Throwback to when every one of his backgrounds was a different picture of her😅

[@mrfoxesite69420]

@@s.moorefilms3760 yeah

[@brea273]

This is a great haul! That iPhone SE alone could pay for the price of everything else if you replace the screen and decide to sell it.

[@rodrigo4379]

we need more videos like this one :D

[@IMDYT420]

10:21 I had a teacher get one of those laptops when I was in grade school and I remember being amazed that it didn’t snap 😂

[@techheadz00]

Very jealous of the ThinkPad find. Love those badboys!

[@jasdog71]

100% per cent agree with the Kindle comments at 2:13. Tried it once and would have been better off spending the time and money on a second hand device. Once the screens are gone those things are toast!

[@spartanwarrior9755]

One of those laptops had an HD DVD drive. That's wild.

[@inqmusician2]

If you don't know already, Windows 10 is going to be out of support, so great option is to install Linux on this ThinkPad. Arch Linux seems to be the pick for these kinds of laptops.

[@Aldo.flores]

That’s an early 4g iPhone, second revision and 4s changed Phillip screws for pentalobe ones, the same thing like MacBooks after 2010. I think that one of greats models (together with the 6g), my old 4s still turns on and works great despite all years

[@JulianSauco]

It’s weird that the Lenovo came with Windows 7, yet the keyboard has the newer Windows 8/10 logo in the start key.

[@WeatherMan2005]

probably due to people hating windows 8

[@theflavianosiblingsexplora914]

Of course, because these ThinkPads in this period (2014-2015, where Windows 8/8.1 is available) can be specially configured with Windows 7 pre-installed. My T450s (which is from 2015) also has the Win 7 sticker on it, suggesting it was configured with it from the factory.

[@emperorarasaka]

E-Waste Centre or as it is more commonly known, Hugh Jeffrey's lawn.

[@j.lietka9406]

$5 AUD for laptops?! What a great place! There's an e - waste center near where I live, and what is in their bin / dumpster is about 98% rendered unusable. I don't know if they sell whole laptops, PCs, tablets, and other electronics.

[@MrMasterKeyboard]

I HAVE THAT EXACT SAME THINKPAD AS MY DAILY DRIVER LAPTOP!!! ITS AMAZING!!!

[@john_marki]

I see BlackBerries and iTunes Coverflow & I click the 👍 button.

[@Alexander_l322]

I love dumpster dives! I always find something well worth taking.

[@frylock428]

Save some of those iOS apps on the MacBook Air, they could be rare

[@sypher0101]

Where is this ewaste place? We have no recycle/reuse places near us :/.

[@nikolaszisoudis8408]

Heck yeah E waste

[@nup5]

There's an ewaste center near me. They actually ENCOURAGE the public to come and rummage through to find parts that still work. I've snagged a GTX 1070, a latitude 55XX series, several old SSDs (but all health data passed), lots of cables, 2 desktop CPUs, and even a laptop battery with 72% remaining health/full charge capacity. All of these I was able to repurpose. In time a few of the SSDs started to throw errors due to worn out flash chips, but the other parts are working to this day. I could salvage even more if I really wanted to!

[@RanenPo]

They just allow you to go through and buy e-waste? Where I live, there are no dedicated e-waste centres and the recycling centres and dumps that take e-waste strictly prohibit people from taking items.

[@gideonbouwman4904]

1:44 I would have loved to get that Toshiba A205 that's at the bottom, it has the HD-DVD drive that indicates it should have the GF8600M-GT GPU.

[@kilianschwarz2172]

The 6s is not necessarily a parts phone. Use broque ramdisk to fetch the owner's email off the device and try to contact them.

[@gorenje_life_simplified]

1:13 Huawei P Smart, from around 2018. My mom had one which she gave me a bit later, it was honestly the best Android I’ve ever used

[@atticusjosh]

Got an iCloud unlocked iPhone Xr and a Telstra Tempo from the woolworths phone recycling bin, the Xr was on a semi-jailbreakable version (16.6.1) too which is a win

[@ThylineTheGay]

watching this on a t440p, it's really an incredible laptop even if quite old, it's plenty fast for almost anything but extremely demanding tasks (even then, if it's a cpu task, then it'll just take a while) even quite good for most 2d or older 3d games

[@Hadisabetghadam]

4:49 That Empty Slot Is For WWAN Card AKA Sim Card Module

[@electronicsfixer]

I was gonna comment that too I've seen it on an old dell XPS which actually labeled it but ofc you can put a secondary wifi card in too (tested it works)

[@ShadowFandub]

US/CA: "5 bucks for this no memory laptop" Meanwhile in Argentina: "This 2001 laptop with broken display, burned motherboard, no memory, no disk, broken keyboard and no charger in great (not really) condition! only for 200 dollars"

[@Saxophone_King]

Lenovo Yogas are by far the most cursed style of computer. I've never seen a computer where the screen flipped all the way around that was well designed. The yogas always break their display cables too. Makes for an expensive fix on a computer that isn't worth the time.

[@C6rl1]

Man if I worked at a ewaste center I would take half of the working stuff