I've been doing it on and off since I was a teenager. My first 'job' was collecting cans and squashing them for the aluminium at about 11. Then I would also ride my bike to building sites and get the copper wire offcuts from the bins.

In 2020 I lost my job and started a business in a tech field, so I filled my spare time with collecting roadside stuff, and also did a bit of paid disposal - in some neighbourhoods it's really hard to get rid of a broken appliance, so I'd pick up dead washing machines and very large plasma TVs and they would pay me $5 or $10 to take them away. I got a ton of old servers from friends of friends, and would sell some parts from them, the power supplies were popular. I also sold some appliance spare parts, and also just fixed a few of them and sold them as working appliances.

I still do a bit of scrapping, but it's mostly old power cords. I have a lead on a company that sells imported equipment where each bit comes with a Euro cable and a US cable that they don't need, so I end up with boxes and boxes of cords, and the market for scrap copper is high enough that I don't even have to strip the PVC off, just chop the ends off and sell them a hundred kilos at a time.

I still get appliances and fix them sometimes, or if a friend or family member wants to get rid of something, I'll do the hard work of carting it off, figuring out if its fixable or not, and selling or scrapping it out.

8mo ago

What's the most unusual way you've made some extra money?

Jump

Agent641 @lemmy.world 8mo ago

Housesitter/pet sitter for disabled pets - giving twice daily insulin injections to a diabetic dog was very stressful.

I also spent a good amount of time scrapping old electronics for circuit boards, aluminium, copper, and wire. Very large printers, laptops, servers, appliances, whatever I could savemge from the side of the road, from junk auctions, and businesses. I made pretty good money doing this on my spare time. I made several tools that hastened the scrapping process, and built a cable stripper that would strip off the PVC from power cords so I could get the raw copper wire. I probably only made like $20 an hour, but it was after work and I had nothing better to do. Once a month or so I'd fill up my van and take it to the scrapyard for $200-$500