Not really the same thing, but just on waste in general:
I worked for a while at a big public state R1 University, and held the title of "Scientific Instrument Specialist" in the Chemistry department. It was my job to keep a lot of things going, and I could be rather resourceful at fixes outside paying manufacturer's high prices(if the parts were still even available from them).
If you needed to "dispose" of asset tagged university property, it went to the surplus warehouse. The warehouse was operated by Inventory Control, and every Wednesday anyone with the university could come in and get anything in the warehouse for their own university business uses.
There was a LOT of office furniture, and frankly I never even asked if I wanted a new desk or desk chair or whatever since I'd just go get one from there. It might take a couple of weeks for exactly what I wanted to show up, but it would.
Of course, though, there were a lot of computers, and more importantly there was a whole lot of of equipment that made its way over there.
Over the years, I grabbed a couple of HP 5890 GCs, for example(that's a pet favorite of mine) and was able to add to our department's capabilities by doing that.
Even if something didn't work, I'd grab it if I maintained a similar one just to have parts on-hand.
The computers were another big one. I didn't need $500 Dell office PCs, but older computers could either be ready-to-go backups for instrument computers or could provide parts to keep one going. That stuff is insanely valuable when you need it, especially as acquiring second hand items on university money could be...difficult...to say the least.
Unfortunately, though, a policy came in that all computers had to be recycled. Initially it was for data security reasons, although that made no sense to me since computers could only be sent to surplus with either DBAN run or with the hard drive removed completely. I begged and pleaded and tried to get exceptions more than once, including escalating it up the chain to the VP that oversaw that department. Sometimes it was little stuff like something with a power supply I needed, but there were bigger things too.
I went in one day and there was a Bruker QTOF Mass Spectrometer, a probably $500K+ unit. I found out where it had come from and was going to take it, except for the lack of a computer. I had a few problems on that front. For one, the software would have been impossible to find, but that was no real issue since the guy who had surplused it saved the hard drive and also had the software install disks. He'd boxed them up and sent them through university mail the day after I contacted him. The real issue, though, were the 3 proprietary interface cards needed to run it. The computer was there. I escalated enough, with my chairs backing, explaining that this wasn't JUST a computer but a fundamental part of the instrument and without it the piece was effectively a big pile of scrap metal. The director of inventory control agreed, and sent down that they needed to let us take the computer if we took the instrument. I went to get it, and the guy who ran the warehouse "couldn't find it". He was pretty obviously upset with us for getting an exception to the rules(why, I don't know) but argued with me when I stood there and pointed to the computer I needed and had permission to take. He jerked me around two more days, the director finally came to the warehouse with me to retrieve it...and the computer recycler had come that morning so it was gone.
By the time I left, the guy who ran the warehouse had found out that many things like that QTOF had their own imbedded computers that operated them, so suddenly they were subject to automatic recycling and not put out on the floor either.
Somewhere or another in there, I'd had this conversation with the director of Environmental Health and Safety, who I knew really well(and still keep in touch with) as I had to work closely with her in other aspects of my job. She was livid also, as she had seen first hand how my department as well as a few others kept their day-to-day operations up, and recognized not only how much money we were saving and also how good it looked for the college's environment aspect to "reuse" as much as possible before recycling.
Thank goodness I'm gone from there, but by the time I left, surplus was useless unless you needed a desk or chair...
