Billy, 22, has autism. He has been volunteering for Giroscope for eight years and said the devices he repaired varied in condition.
“Some of them are quite good, but other ones can be in a very bad condition. If it’s too far gone, we’ll salvage what we can so we can reuse it in something else,” he said.
“We take them all apart, clean them, refurbish them and if they need any repairs, we do any repairs to them.
“We give to people who need them. We also do sell them as well. All the money goes back into the project.”
Billy and the other volunteers try to save as many devices as they can from landfill. They also recycle motherboards, lithium batteries, metal and plastic cases.
“It does make me a bit upset that so many devices get thrown away when they don’t need to be,” he said.
“It also doesn’t help that the companies, they always want you to upgrade to a newer model, even if the old one still works fine, by not releasing anymore updates to it.
“It feels satisfying when we save a device that would’ve otherwise been thrown away.”
