Scrap Around the House: Living Room/Bedrooms

Scrap Around the House, part 2

Following up on looking for scrap metal in your house, we move from looking in your kitchen to the living room/bedrooms. These are combined mostly because they contain many similar kinds of items. Getting right into it.

Looking around the living room/bedrooms, we see...

• Tvs: Tvs, from old CRTs to modern flat screens, are a menagerie of metal pieces, wiring, circuit boards, plastic and glass. Taking apart broken or very old TVs can yield a few ponds each of copper, steel and e-scrap. E-scrap can be very valuable but requires a little more processing to either get the metal or sell to people online who want to process it into its constituent parts.* 

*Glass and bulbs found in the TVs can be valuable(some places buy glass and the tungsten in the bulbs) but also dangerous if you get careless. Gloves are recommended to deal with the cut hazard along with being careful as most bulbs contain mercury gas, a toxic heavy metal. 

• Decor: Clocks, statues, candle holders... The list goes on but many household decor items contains some metal. Break it down and collect the metal pieces. Simple but we often forget the obvious.

• Computers/E-waste: I've touched on it a few times, and I'll touch on it again. Computers contain small amounts of gold and lead, along a fair amount of copper wiring and boards. Other e-scrap(radios and other small electronics) will more than likely contain a good amount of copper wiring and small amounts of other metals like steel. 

As you may or may not have noticed, many of the items around your house contain metal that can be reclaimed. This generates less waste in your garbage(a huge plus if you have pay-as-you-throw trash service) AND some extra income in your pocket.