Ever wonder what happens to that old PC you put in your trash on garbage day? Well it probably ends up in your local municipal land fill allong with over 80% of the estimated 133,000 PC’s discarded each day in the United States. In addition to PCs the bulk of nearly 2 million tons of our e-waste comes from TVs. “The computer industry is ramping up its campaign against electronic waste, a dangerous byproduct of technology’s relentless expansion.”
ROSEVILLE, California (AP) — This is where computers go to die a green death.
Inside Hewlett-Packard Co.’s cavernous recycling plant in the Sacramento suburbs, truckloads of obsolete PCs, servers and printers collected from consumers and businesses nationwide are cracked open by goggled workers who pull out batteries, circuit boards and other potentially hazardous components.
The electronic carcasses are fed into a massive machine that noisily shreds them into tiny pieces and mechanically sorts the fragments into piles of steel, aluminum, plastic and precious metals. Those scraps are sent to smelting plants, mostly in the Sacramento area, where they are melted down for reuse.
Discarded computers, TVs, radios, batteries, cell phones, and other gadgets contain a stew of toxic metals and chemicals.
Computers are cracked open by workers who pull out batteries, circuit boards and other potentially hazardous components.
