why did we start recycling computers?
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originally a lot of the contacts were gold and so it was worthwhile. I do not know whether this is still true.
Because recycling materials in computers, and computers themselves saves a lot of energy as far as making them from scratch. It also helps with environmental pollution and landfill space.
Currently there are a lot of advantages to recycling computers and the parts. First it does reduce the amount of electronic trash we throw away, and as well it reduces the amount of metals thrown away as well. The environment can only support so much on metals and plastics thrown away. Gold was at one time used in connections, and now its mostly soldering materials used these days. However some of it is still usable. The batteries in a pc are still hazardous in large amounts if left alone to decay in the ground. Plus its a good way to scavenge spare parts as well. I do it and recommend it to all pc owners.
I can tell you that the short answer is MONEY. In the 1990′s, I worked for a company called ENVIROTECH.
Like the other poster said, many parts of the computer are plated with gold. Usually the contacts of connectors and inside microchips. Basically we would cut the parts that were valuable and send them to get melted down and sold to a metals broker.
Back then, it was profitable because the computers we "recycled" were the old "mainframes". A typical mainframe would consist of severall large frames weighing several hundred pounds each. So along with the gold, there was literally tons of other metals like steel, copper wire, aluminum, stainless steel, and other precious metals like silver, cobalt, platinum and others. Each one was worth something as metal scrap, so long as you seperated the different types and so long as someone WANTED it.
So far so good right?
The problems start with plastic and other harder to recycle materials like the display monitors and the circuit boards. These were worth nothing, so we sent them to the dump! So much for the environmental aspect! More modern computers are MUCH smaller, and the gold plating is MUCH thinner and plastic has replaced metal in many cases.
It will become more and more difficult to recycle computers, because if the material you want to recycle is worth nothing, nobody is going to do it for free, right?
You can kid yourself and say that it’s for the environment that people do it, but really it’s about money. Metal is relativelly easy to recycle, and is usally WORTH money because someone WANTS it. Things like plastic, LED screens, CRT screens, small wires, fluorescent bulbs, some batteries, styrofoam and many others COST money to recycle, because NOBODY WANTS it.
Anyway, I could go on, but basically, that’s how it works.