You have to be running alot of film & paper to make it worth your while...we do it for compliance, but I can tell you that it was a good 5 years or so of running an X-Rite unit weekly before we had any sizable amount of "sludge" scraped off the unit......do it for the environment, because you're not really going to make money off silver recovery.(posted 8136 days ago)Besides cobbling something together like mentioned above, or using steel wool or something in a bucket...you can get that "silver magnet" thing for tray use. I've never used anything like these, just seen 'em in catalogs. I have used the Kodak units in the 5 gallon drums, but you need to use those on a regular basis...they're not practical for low volume use.
The best thing I could suggest, would be to look for a graphic arts/press supplier in your area that deals with silver recovery...there's one nearby us that makes a variety of recovery units that are similar to the Kodaks, but smaller. They're made into PVC pipes that can be either fitted inline to the drains of processors (like typesetting machines, or xray processors), or smaller units that you can pour the used fix into and let it drain out afterwards....you test the cartridge's capacity with those fixer test papers from Kodak....when the unit is full, you return it to the company (you have to leave a deposit to begin with) and they give you a cut of it, and a new unit to start over again....I don't think you'd get rich off this though, but it's probably better than dumping it down the drain over the long run.
MY opinions as always, hope this helps...