Where Do Your Recycled Electronics Go?

I do my utmost to recycle as much as possible, especially obsolete electronics, which, in this household, are legion. But does taking that old computer or monitor to your local recycling day guarantee you're doing something good for the world? Probably not.

The latest studies show that up to 80 percent of electronics picked up to be recycled are actually shipped overseas to China, India, Nigeria, and other countries, where they're smashed, ripped, and burned open to extract glass and metals like gold and lead. It's not the pristine clean room you're probably imagining: workers use hammers, torches, and their bare hands to get inside. The amount of toxic runoff (and exposure to workers) is, frankly, unmeasurable.

In the linked CNN story, one environmental group executive notes that we're protecting our own environment at the expense of many others. Here, we feel we're doing good by "recycling," when in reality, many less-than-savory recycling companies just resell what they can, then give any scrap to export companies.

Things could conceivably change. China, for example, now bans the import of electronic waste, and any containers found with e-junk inside are turned around and sent back where they came from; 85 shipping containers of electronic waste were returned from Hong Kong alone in the first nine months of 2007. On the other hand, exporting electronic waste from the U.S. is not illegal, so the activity is likely to continue until our own government cracks down on exactly what constitutes "recycling."

LINK: Destination of 'recycled' electronics may surprise you