Wade Cawley's love of repurposing electronics started in high school when he would take home decades-old laptops to fix up and reuse.
The now 24-year-old never imagined his hobby would transform into a successful electronic waste recycling service, Rekindle Me, in the NSW Illawarra and Shoalhaven.
He has now personally saved more than 25 tonnes of e-waste from landfill.
"What I'm doing — taking things apart to recycle or reuse — is very unique," he said.
"Of all the e-waste I take in per week, about 700 kilograms of materials are recycled and less than 100 kilograms is sent to landfill."
Mr Cawley started his business in his parent's garage in Berry in 2022, before moving to a warehouse in Port Kembla this year to keep up with demand.
He is the only full-time employee, with his mum and close friends sometimes lending a hand.
"It was important for me to be my own boss because I had a double foot reconstruction about 10 years ago and I get a lot of residual pain," he said.
"I tried working for other employers, but I didn't want to let anyone down."
It is hard to miss his bright red electric van which he uses to collect electronic goods from businesses, schools, and households for free.
He then disassembles every item, a skill he learned from YouTube, determining what components can be fixed and resold, sent to recycling plants, or mined for precious metals like gold and silver.
While most e-waste recyclers take only computers, phones and televisions, Mr Cawley accepts anything but large white goods.
His warehouse is flooded with gaming consoles, coffee machines, and vintage computers like a 1975 IBM System 32 and a 1983 Apple IIe.
"That's why everybody loves my service because we take the vacuum cleaners, the servers," he said.
"We take the weird odd-ball things that a lot of people don't know what to do with."
Australia's e-waste woes
More than 50 million metric tonnes of electronic waste are generated worldwide per year, yet only 20 per cent is formally recycled.
Australians are the fifth largest producers of e-waste per capita, with almost 27 kilograms dumped per person every year.
Mr Cawley said the statistics are alarming but poor resourcing in Australia means many components of electrical goods, like copper and aluminium, are sent overseas to be recycled.
"Australia is very far behind the rest of the world in regard to recycling, and e-waste [recycling] is still very much in its infancy here," he said.
"Because it is an emerging sector, a lot of the machinery to take this stuff apart either doesn't exist or is very expensive.
"My main goal is to keep as much material in Australia as possible, but we simply do not have a big enough manufacturing force."
Mr Cawley also sees himself in a David and Goliath-type battle against commercial manufacturing industries that he believes do not have sustainable practices front of mind.
"Most e-waste was never meant to be recycled in the first place," he said.
"A lot of things are glued shut, or screw bolt heads are ground off, and the only way we can get into it is physically breaking the item.
"Everything is being made so cheaply it's just not worth being fixed, and that is a shame."
Hidden dangers and gems inside electronics
Mr Cawley's work can be dangerous, as electronic waste accounts for 70 per cent of toxic chemicals like mercury and lead found in Australian landfill.
However, electronics can be untapped gold mines — literally.
"Once I get into a circuit board, I can get gold, silver, platinum, and a bunch of other rare earth metals," he said.
"There's more gold in one tonne of e-waste than there is in one tonne of gold paydirt, and we're literally just throwing it all into a big hole in the ground.
"We need to keep as much of these materials as we can in Australia."
