POLOKWANE – Boys can be very curious, inquisitive and explorative, and many parents experience situations where some of their appliances end up in a thousand pieces.

Learning about e-waste from TikTok and Google

Thirteen-year-old Aiden Getkate not only loves taking things apart, but also building new, working items.

“Since computer parts are so expensive, I had to make another plan to get cheaper parts. I saw a TikTok user posting about e-waste, and I Googled it,” he said.

It was here that Aiden learned about E-Waste Limpopo, situated in the city. With the help of the team at E-Waste Limpopo, he learned more about e-waste.

Aiden admits that a typical day in his life is chaos as he does 101 things at once.

“I have a lot of projects on the go. The more e-waste I have, the busier I am. E-waste can be used by me for upcycling and is kept in my electrical work area. The e-waste that cannot be used is stored in a Wendy house, and when I have a big enough load, I take it to E-Waste Limpopo,” he said.

Most surprising find

Aiden collects a variety of items such as computers, monitors, speakers, Wi-Fi routers and fans.

Sometimes he gets very old electronics, and he admits he loves taking those apart to see how it works.

“I once got a dot matrix printer. So far, the most valuable item I found was an RX 580 graphics card. The most surprising was a computer that was wired up all wrong and had a fan that almost caught fire,” he said.

‘I now fix other people’s IT and electrical items’

The opportunity to become good at building computers and understanding how the parts work and what they do has changed Aiden’s life.

“I get computers and parts that I could never have bought; now I even fix other people’s IT and electrical items,” he said.

Aiden likes that he might find valuable things like power supplies, motherboards, RAMs and graphics cards.

He says it is fun to get old stuff and test it to see if it works, and then build something cool with it.

“You do not get much money from e-waste, but that is ok, as I love working with e-waste and I know it is getting disposed of in the right way,” he said.

E-waste bin available

After Aiden strips the waste down, tests the parts and rebuilds or refurbishes them, he collects the unusable items, and when there are enough, he takes them to E-Waste Limpopo to be further stripped.

“People do not know where to take all their old electronics and what to do with them. There are not enough drop-off points for e-waste. We have an e-waste bin, provided by E-Waste Limpopo, to make it easier.”

The drop-off bin is at 7 Unicorn Street.