"Edwin Pawlowski" ) writes:
"Al Bundy" wrote in message

I saw some show on TV a bit back where in some poor country they get
mountains of junk electronics appliances (locally or on barges, don't
recall exactly) and poor locals pick through them getting specs of all
kinds of stuff to raise a few bucks.

I guess there is some money to be made from them. I know of a plant being
built in Florida that will specialize in recycling electronics. Used to be
some gold in the connectors but I think much has been eliminated.

There are two issues there. The first is keeping unneeded things out
of the landfill. The second is recovering some of the material.

The recovery is I gather expensive compared to what they recover, and
the materials needed for the recovery is toxic. So when it's shipped
over to third world countries, the danger comes because they are trying
to make money off it, and take steps that wouldn't be allowed in North
America. The toxic stuff ends up in the water table over there, rather
than in North America, though at least when it's shipped over there, they
are trying to do recovery.

There must be a lot of bulk in that stuff. I'm just thinking of my personal
use over the last 15 - 20 years or so. I'm on my fifth monitor, at least
the fourth computer (some were upgraded in the same case), three printers
moved on, two TVs. Makes for a fair amount of bulk for just one person.

If people simply did some stripping themselves before tossing, a good
portion of the bulk would diminish. If people throwing out computers would
take the electronics out, and then get the metal casing to metal recycling,
that does take care of much of the bulk. Same with printers, get the circuit
boards out of the plastic. Not a perfect solution, but better than
nothing.

I've never tossed something that is intact. But then I want the parts
myself. So I will strip a bad hard drive down, get the magnets out of it,
and the metal from them goes to metal recycling. This is not even some
great skill, if people can screw together an Ikea table, they can strip
down their computer before tossing.

But then there's an interesting point. If I come across a computer waiting
for the garbage, if it's intact (and of interest), I'd make the effort to
bring it home. But the more that's been stripped, the less likely I
will. I may take parts, if anything interesting remains. A complete
unit might find someone who can fix it or make use of it (a lot of
electronics is tossed for reasons other than it's broken), but a stripped
unit won't.

And as electronic recycling becomes common place, I'm not fully conviced
the right decisions will be made. I'd love to drop off some junk (like
that I've pulled from the garbage in the first place) and be able to claim
something someone else has tossed, that interests me or can finish off
something I have (like claim a hard drive to go in that computer I brought
home that had none). But that can't happen, because any useful items,
at least here, are sold on the used market to help finance the collection.
Yet I imagine there is much that can't find a market, because it's old
or obscure, the sorts of things I'd really like to come across. The rest
is likely stripped, but again, I wonder if they seek the hard to reuse
things like the gold on connectors, rather than the parts themselves.

Michael