A RECYCLING COMPANY

We're back with NBC news In Depth and tonight it has to do with computers and some.
Americans own 3 billion electronic devices and when it's time for them to die, it's
creates a big problem because of what they contain and the harm they can cause to the
environment.15% of htem get recycled but what about the rest ? Here's NBC's Kevin
Tibbles.
Going Green
Old circuit boards, hard drives, computer mainframes, in their day vital to the
information age, now obsolete, toxic electronic junk.
The environmental protection agency says that Americans throw out some 2 million tons
of E waste every year, filling landfills with metals, plastics and poisons.
It takes us about maybe, I'm gonna say 8 seconds to remove everything off of this
board.
Brian B.... is a miner of sorts. His Chicago recycling company... through mountains of
electronic cast offs. What do they find ? Precious metals, gold in processors, silver in
tape, and platinum in cicuits, but also dangerous heavy metals, mercury in monitors and
lead in sockets.
Every piece of electronics has a printed circuit board and every printed circuit board
has a lead base solder.
70 % of all heavy metals found in landfills come from discarded electronics. Recycling
will keep them out ensuring seepage doesn't pollute local ground water.
But most of us don't recycle our electronic junk. If your house is anything like mine it
all winds up cramped in our drawers somewhere or stuck in a corner. You feel guilty
tossing it, but what do you do ?
Like Brad... and Michel...many are turning to electronic recycling depots like this one
run by the city of Chicago.
If it can be recycled and put to better use then more power to you.
William... a pioneer in the movement for sustainable design argues that everything we
make should be designed for reuse : Future generations will look back and say what
were you thinking treating all of this, it's useless waste when it had all this value .
Giving electronic waste an electronic reincarnation and keepingit out of the dump.
KevinTibbles, NBC news, Chicago.