Great qustion Oxydolfan
Actually, many many good disposed of machines, top load or otherwise, do go on to reconditioners and rebuilders.
Many a store and individual in Charlotte has made their livings doing this. I think with the more "disposability" of the newer machines and the cheaper (relatively speaking) prices of some top loaders, there may not be as much of a niche as there once was with used appliances, but MANY do go on to have second lives.
The situation varies in municipalities throughout the country, but here our disposed of machines that do go to the landfill/crusher are set-out for a while for others to scavenge parts from. In some cases I have heard where people have arranged "deals" with the site managers for whole machines.
When machines are hauled away by appliance stores such as BestBuy, HH Gregg, Sears, whatever...they usually have deals arranged with local people to pickup their stache each evening or specific days and the haulers can sell or dispose of the stuff at their leisure, almost always to guys like me who like to tinker and repair/restore.
I rebuilt more than 50 Kenmore and Whirlpool belt-drive washers in the 90s for fun. I arranged a deal with the Sears store manager in town at the store that was responsible for all the appliance distribution in Charlotte. When I found out they were putting ALL their haul-backs into a compactor like that in the video, I gasped and asked if I could have them instead.
I was shocked that nobody had asked this before, but the manager was thrilled to be able to decommission the compactor and lower his liability insurance. It was a small personal victory for me to see the compactor itself hauled away!
A friend of mine, who repaired and sold appliances for a living, lived nearby the Sears store. He went by there every weekday to get whatever Sears had accumulated. Sometimes he'd get me to help. I always wanted to keep EVERYTHING, but he'd occasionally force me to dump something in the crusher that probably did belong there. We did this for about 6 or 7 years until Sears changed their distribution method and farmed out the deliveries to an outside company as a cost savings. But, for the time we had the deal, we saved hundreds and hundreds of good washers, dryers, and refriges from going to waste. I went thru the 50, plus I have 30 more still to work on. That's 80 machines, and my friend I bet went thru a couple hundred a year, at least.
As a side bonus, at least as I see it, the parts divisions of Whirpool, GE, Maytag, etc. got a deal too because we had to purchase repair parts for those machines. I spent thousands on Whirlpool FSP parts that would have otherwise gone unsold, and I am pretty sure that those who got my washers would NOT have bought something new if they didn't get mine.
I know similar stuff like this happens all over. Yes, some good stuff does get dumped and wasted, but it isn't as bad as it might first appear, thankfully.
