Ask HN: Is Anyone Recycling Chips?
With the chip shortage in full force, I would imagine there are literal tons of electronics getting dumped in landfills that contain useful circuitry, including chips. Is anyone trying to recycle these?
Hobbyist recycling exists, but usually doesn't count in these discussions for some reason (small appetite vs the total amount maybe).
Getting anything useful out of modern electronics isn't necessarily easy; keeping it functional as you pull it is even harder. I'm sure there's room for making the process more efficient but it seems to me there's going to be a lot of human attention required, no matter what you do, and that will keep costs high.
Then when you've got chips recovered, cleaned, etc; you (or your customers) have to test them and verify they're up to specs the original manufacturer may not care to share. Perhaps the OEM could be customers and use their extant knowledge and test lines but those are already full of newer components than the recovered stuff.
Personally, I advocate dismantling everything electronic that has stopped working; when its "if you can't see a problem to fix then you're not breaking it any worse than it was", at least. If nothing else the genius and scale of these assemblies can be appreciated.
Having a pile of "maybe that can be used for something else" parts is a great way to get into electronics, and with arduinos and "maker movement" shops like adafruit supplying know how and glue parts, much more of it can be used than ever before.
Keeping the pile limited to some sane volume helps a lot if you share your home with other life.