Kerbside Ettiquette?

Wish this was my neighbourhood's hard rubbish night. Look at that crib! From here.

Am I crazy for thinking this is wrong??

A couple of weeks ago we put our fully functioning but no longer needed electric hot water system out on the kerb for someone to pick up for free. (It's not something we do often, except hard rubbish nights - the funnest nights, excluding Firecracker Night and Christmas Eve!)

Anyway, a man from our neighbourhood, let's call him Captain McScroogepants, saw our fully functioning water system and rather than take the whole thing, proceeded to remove the copper pipe from the outside, rendering the whole thing pretty useless. He went home, profitable copper pipe in hand, but came back about an hour later and removed the element from the system, rendering it completely and utterly useless! At this point Sparky asked him what he was doing:

Sparky: What are you doing?
Captain McScroogepants: Well, I'm taking the element from your hot water system.
Sparky: Oh, OK. We were thinking someone could, you know, take the whole thing, as it is fully functioning.
Captain: Well, I don't need the whole thing.
Sparky: And now no-one will want the remnants.
Captain: Not my problem.
Sparky: ......

Technically he was right, it wasn't his problem. But I was under the impression that kerbside ettiquette means for you to take the whole thing and then deal with what you don't want. For example, you spy an awesome timber framed lounge in front of a neighbours' but it has disgusting poo-brown corduroy cushions. Too bad. You take the lounge and cushions and then deal with it yourself. I'd never leave the poo-brown cushions. I'd want to, but I wouldn't. It's just not cricket.

Am I being uptight? (Likely. Very likely.)

PS. A junkyard man did come and pick the rest of the system up a week later, which made me happy.