A high school student shared their creative and successful side hustle with Reddit’s “r/pcmasterrace” forum. While in need of some extra money, the original poster decided to fix up and resell old electronics from the government.
“Turns out, the government really does throw away gold,” wrote the OP.
The OP repairs whatever they can salvage and then sells the used equipment at a discounted rate to people who can’t afford a new laptop.
“Items I can’t fix I take the boards out and get the gold, and scrap the metal at a yard that pays me decently,” the OP explained.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Photo Credit: Reddit
Redditors were impressed with the student’s electronic repair skills.
“That’s awesome dude,” responded one user.
“Respect the hustle, see if anyone is a charity organization who takes older [PCs] for the needy,” added another Redditor.
The best part? The OP receives the majority of the old electronics for free, so when they resell them, they make close to 100% profit.
Fixing up old electronics is a great way to salvage pieces that were assumed to be unusable, helping keep unnecessary e-waste from crowding landfills. This is important because e-waste has a much bigger environmental footprint compared to everyday trash.
In 2022 alone, the world produced 62 million tons of e-waste, according to the World Health Organization. Since e-waste does not biodegrade, repurposing and recycling old electronics is a great way to reduce the electronic industry’s impact on the planet.
When old electronics are thrown out prematurely, there’s an economic loss on top of the environmental consequences. The labor and production costs invested in manufacturing those items are also wasted.
Redditors continued to discuss the high school student’s side hustle.
“It’s like you’re a recycling company,” commented one user.
“Governments are HUGELY wasteful. HUGELY,” added another Redditor. “If you can hang around some government throwaways you can literally get ‘gold’.”
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