Wired/Randall Sullivan
♦ Here’s a story of an unusual and successful dumpster diver in Wired: “The Pro Dumpster Diver Who’s Making Thousands Off America’s Biggest Retailers”. This story is about an elite dumpster diver whose recycling methodology helped him grow money through thoughtful recycling. Enjoy a peek inside the life of little known specialty recyclers who know how to pick the best places to dumpster dive. His story could be the story of future elite dumpster divers in Salisbury or for that matter anywhere else where valuable materials are being cast aside.
This story reminded me of a reclusive genius Erik I knew in the 70’s in University City, Pennsylvania. Today Erik would’ve been labeled autistic. Eric earned Ph.D.’s in both Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering, but found his niche away from laboratories and academia. An odd duck, he viewed coworkers as annoying encumbrances and interested females as “suffocating” and “prying”.
Eric was an astute recycler of scrap Univac computers–those early sizeable mainframe computers found only in large institutions in the 50’s. The Univacs were decked out with tubes and magnetic tape reels. (A Univac mainframe appears in this article’s featured photo.) Eric also dumpster dived for scrap medical equipment and recycled their parts. In turn he would invest the money in the commodities market where he was pretty much a savant. Over the years he was credited with several dozen of patents for unusual machine parts. We’d chat across porches or I’d run into him at the neighborhood grocery where he wore a canvas apron flecked with sulpheric acid burn holes from rending gold from computer scrap. He was the first elite dumpster diver I encountered.
http://www.wired.com/?p=1686399
