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The 7 - One Question... - What things are thrown away where you work? Register and log in to post!
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Guru Zim
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#1 Posted on 23.7.07 1822.49
Reposted on: 23.7.14 1822.49
OK, I admit it: I'm kind of fascinated with the waste stream of American business. What does your company throw out?

I used to work at a cable company, and one thing that we got rid of was the old computer equipment that had been fully depreciated. These machines worked but I guess we couldn't sell them becuase of the tax implications... I don't recall why specifically.

What gets thrown out where you work?

(People are making bio-diesel out of former waste from Fast Food - I haven't worked that many places so I don't know what else is "out there" that we could be using for a different purpose. Maybe I'll get an idea from this thread.)
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DJ FrostyFreeze
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#2 Posted on 23.7.07 1835.04
Reposted on: 23.7.14 1837.57
{ Sorry, you must be logged in to see this text! } and we used to throw away A LOT of perfectly good food every night. This was in 1995 and their big thing at the time was that their food was FRESH FRESH FRESH. So every night, we would throw away ALL of the evening's leftover hot foods (we never re-frigerated hot food to be reheated later) and we would put all of the cold stuff (cole slaw, cranberry sauce, macaroni salad, etc) in the fridge with date & time labels on them. If that stuff didnt get sold the next day by a certain time, it went in the trash too.

I was the 2nd person they hired at their LAX-adjacent location, so I was there when we opened the store. The first 2-3 weeks we were open, we used to box it all up for a local homeless shelter. But they suddenly stopped coming and we started putting it right in the trash after that. We prolly filled 1 or 2 "WWE hardcore match"-sized trash cans with perfectly good hot food every night (after I took my cut, of course).

The rest of my jobs have all been at shipping companies (and 1 dotcom) and all we every threw away there was a whole lot of paper.

EDIT: I mixed up "They're" and "Their", how humiliating.

(edited by DJ FrostyFreeze on 23.7.07 1743)
drjayphd
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#3 Posted on 23.7.07 1931.47
Reposted on: 23.7.14 1931.51
I worked there too, FrostyFreeze. This was around 1998-1999, and they did the same thing. Except that which would get thrown away was fair game for whoever was closing. I have no idea how much cornbread I ended up bringing home. Although it was probably for the best that they didn't save all the mac and cheese, considering how it doesn't take to reheating.

I actually asked one of the managers on duty one night about saving the food and giving it to homeless shelters, but was told that they'd have to provide the same amount of food every night. Anyone know if that's true?

But since then, it's just been wall-to-wall paper. I've been pulling out boxes so I can use them at home, but most of the paper gets thrown into a bin to be brought elsewhere to recycle it.
Merc
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#4 Posted on 23.7.07 1940.59
Reposted on: 23.7.14 1942.04
The old IT equipment is us too.
Some working, but out of warranty or not fast enough for business systems get sent to auction, but things like old CRT monitors, flat bed scanners, printers etc just gets junked.
Kevintripod
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#5 Posted on 24.7.07 0125.05
Reposted on: 24.7.14 0125.11
    Originally posted by drjayphd
    I worked there too, FrostyFreeze. This was around 1998-1999, and they did the same thing. Except that which would get thrown away was fair game for whoever was closing.


I used to work at Hardee's years ago, and all employees were strictly told by management that they would be fired if caught taking or eating any food that was to be thrown out.

I always thought that was soooooo stupid.
dMp
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#6 Posted on 24.7.07 0422.01
Reposted on: 24.7.14 0422.31
    Originally posted by Kevintripod
      Originally posted by drjayphd
      I worked there too, FrostyFreeze. This was around 1998-1999, and they did the same thing. Except that which would get thrown away was fair game for whoever was closing.


    I used to work at Hardee's years ago, and all employees were strictly told by management that they would be fired if caught taking or eating any food that was to be thrown out.

    I always thought that was soooooo stupid.


Well, it does make sense in a way.
Else you might save & hide the tastiest food for yourself.

I used to work at a bakery and we used to throw out everything as well at the end of the day.
Usually we'd take a bite out of a cake but that depended on who was around.
Officially we weren't allowed to do that.

For a short while we gave old bread to a homeless shelter nearby but that stopped when the folks there expected US to bring it to them!
Shem the Penman
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#7 Posted on 24.7.07 0613.35
Reposted on: 24.7.14 0614.28
I used to work at Random House. Everybody got tons of freebie books, so there were always boxes and stacks of books out in the hallways free for the taking. Yeah, most of 'em were crappy romance novels and such, but I still managed to swell my personal library quite a bit. It was best for me when Random House had a distribution deal with TSR -- I'd go all over the building picking up Dungeons & Dragons books and then selling them to a half-price game dealer.

I currently work for a private library, though, and very little gets thrown out beyond the usual paper and lunch detritus.
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#8 Posted on 24.7.07 0815.10
Reposted on: 24.7.14 0815.13
    Originally posted by Shem the Penman
    detritus.
Nice word; you made me run to the dictionary first thing in the morning. Now I have to find some unsuspecting colleagues and work 'detritus' into a conversation.

As far as work related things, we mostly throw away paper type products that can't be recycled. Actually, we probably throw away more books, journals and magazines than anything else. Paper and cardboard all get recycled. And, for depreciated computers/printers/monitors/etc., we either donate them to local schools or have a raffle where interested employees submit their names and then can win the equipment.
Guru Zim
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#9 Posted on 24.7.07 1232.26
Reposted on: 24.7.14 1232.36
Anyone here work for Starbucks? I'm curious to know what they do with all of the coffee grounds that they go through every day. Are these binned or sent off to be mulched?
samoflange
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#10 Posted on 24.7.07 1300.22
Reposted on: 24.7.14 1300.24
I currently work at a company in the chemical sensor business. What mostly gets thrown away is the usual office stuff, old sensors/meters, and packing materials. A company comes to take paper from the recycling bins about once a month or so. Old computer equpiment is either sold to employees at cheap prices or given to schools/libraries. Our sensors use some costly metals, and they are salvaged somehow, though I don't know any details there.

We have an ultrapure water loop in house and my research involves heavy use of that. UPW is pretty costly to make and a few parts-per-trillion of anything other than water in it will contaminate it enough that it's useless to me. We probably "throw away" about 1500 L/day of the stuff. So, essentially, I'm throwing away lots of electricity and ion-exchange resins.

We also have calibration solutions which are sold in Nalgene plastic bottles. There's always a crapload of them in the trash, maybe 100 or so per month. That's the one that irks me the most, because we could easily reuse alot of those if proper measures were taken.

(edited by samoflange on 24.7.07 1401)
Mike Zeidler
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#11 Posted on 24.7.07 1830.58
Reposted on: 24.7.14 1832.30
Starbucks give away the grounds as mulch. You can go in and there's usually a fake tree with silver bags around the base in a pot, with all the free grounds you can take.

As seen here: http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/compost.asp
Peter The Hegemon
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#12 Posted on 24.7.07 1852.04
Reposted on: 24.7.14 1852.41
This isn't quite what the question was asking, but anyway...

I've worked in radio for most of my adult life (although at the moment I'm not on the air, because my other job conflicts with when they have time on the schedule). One of the stations I worked at used to do something called a "party bus". Basically a company bought a bunch of tickets for major events in cities that are 1 or 2 hours away (concerts, playoff games, that sort of thing). They then sell it as a package with transportation, some food, and maybe a souvenir. For every so many sold through the station, the station gets a freebie for the staff.

Well, we were doing a party bus to see Springsteen on the E Street Band reunion tour in Hartford. One of the other DJs was in the office, and noticed there were two extra passes sitting on a desk. She asked, and the PD (program director) said he was going to throw them away! This DJ was already going, so she pointed out that I had gone to the Springsteen show at the Meadowlands, and maybe I'd want to go to this one, too. Which, needless to say, I did. I was even able to find an attractive companion for the evening. (Never went anywhere, but hey, she was nice company.)

So, all's well that ends well--it was a fantastic show. But it just made me wonder how many tickets to events like that DO end up in the garbage because a PD can't be bothered to take a few moments to say, "hey, anyone wanna go see Springsteen Sunday night?"
Dexley's Midnight Jogger
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#13 Posted on 25.7.07 0844.27
Reposted on: 25.7.14 0844.33
I work at a hospital and we provide a basin full of hygeine supplies to patients when they are admitted. After they leave we have to throw out every item they left behind, even if they didn't open it. This is because we can't verify that it wasn't tampered with once it leave our eyesight (such as sneezed on or spilled on). We throw away a lot of shampoo and toothpaste that goes untouched. Same with food. I see a lot of waste but it is due to infection-control issues.

When I worked at a chain bookstore I had to rip the covers off a lot of paperbacks and magazines and send them back to their publisher. Once I did steal a sample CD that came with a magazine.
Mike Zeidler
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#14 Posted on 25.7.07 0929.28
Reposted on: 25.7.14 0931.09
Funny anecdote about ripping off covers for returns.

The new Dark Tower comic book series from marvel is non-returnable, but apparently no one told the people at Borders, who proceeded to rip the covers off the overstocked first couple of issues before finding out otherwise.
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#15 Posted on 26.7.07 0946.58
Reposted on: 26.7.14 0947.26
    Originally posted by Shem the Penman
    I currently work for a private library, though, and very little gets thrown out beyond the usual paper and lunch detritus.


Our library's summer project is to reduce 50% of our Reference collection (who needs library catalogs and ISBN directories from the 70s and 80s, especially when people who actually care about such information can just find it online), so we have a TON of books/paper being sent out for recycling.



(edited by Alessandro on 26.7.07 1047)
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