Employee sparks envy with photo of incredible discovery pulled from trash at work: 'Lots of people could make good use of one of these'

Businesses spend a lot of money to keep their electronic equipment up to date. That can sometimes result in unnecessary waste when functional equipment gets discarded irresponsibly. Luckily, this time, an employee was there to take advantage of their company's carelessly discarded resources.

What's happening?

The employee in question posted on r/nvidia, a subreddit dedicated to a tech company that produces graphics cards for computers. "Was e-wasting an old server at work today," they said. "Opened it up and saw this."

The "this" in question was a computer tower packed full of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards, seven in total. A single one of these units can be found for almost $300 on Amazon.

"I hope these get a good home rather than just trashed, the 1080ti is still very solid," said one commenter. "Lots of people could make good use of one of these."

According to a comment by the original poster, the incredible amount of computing power was needed for an imaging application. They actually managed to get in touch with the manufacturer that built the server, thanks to the unique setup and the small online community.

But now that the server is being retired, the original poster's employer was prepared to simply throw out that valuable equipment until the original poster stepped in.

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Why is e-waste important?

E-waste, or electronic waste, is an issue both from the perspective of cost and from the perspective of environmental friendliness. Money-wise, it simply doesn't make sense to throw away expensive, functioning electronics — and when businesses do it, customers foot the bill.

As far as the environment goes, e-waste is a problem because it often contains toxic chemicals that can contaminate soil and water. Also, it contains valuable materials like rare metals — and the more we throw those away instead of salvaging them, the more we have to mine for raw materials, damaging the environment further.

Is the company doing anything about this?

In this case, the original poster was somewhat lucky. While their employer didn't have an eco-friendly policy for e-waste disposal, they at least allowed the original poster to salvage the equipment. Unfortunately, some companies have been known to destroy electronics intentionally to prevent salvage opportunities.

What eco-friendly alternatives are there for e-waste?

If you need to get rid of an electronic device, there are many programs to do so responsibly in a way that will allow the device to be recycled — and you can even get rewards for turning it in. Trashie's Tech Take Back Box is one example. You can find more here.