Once the latest thing, now they're just old and basically worthless. In Howard County, though, there's a new place for obsolete computer gear, and a businessman who sees gold in it. Howard County has allowed Scott Wilson, owner of a scrap business called Subtractions, to put a dumpster at the county landfill to collect computers that otherwise would be part of the landfill trash. Wilsoncarefully harvests them for precious metals, recyclable tin, usable cordsand processors, squeezing value from as much as 85 percent of each computer.
Most computers eventually find their way to a basement, storage facility or landfill.
A National Safety Council study estimated that more than 20million personal computers became obsolete in the United States last year, and only about 2.3 million of them were recycled in any way. About 1.3million were restored or upgraded, mostly by groups that supply refurbished computers to schools and charitable organizations. Nationwide, industry experts are forecasting a solid waste stream cloggedwith computers in coming years, and that could spike upward in coming weeks, as people and businesses rid themselves of computers that they can't make Y2K-compliant. Across the country, scrap metal businesses have salvaged some value from computers for several years. But there are few like Wilson, who picks apart each unit as if it were a chicken carcass, finding uses for the white and dark meat, the fat, the skin, even the bones.