Behind the Scenes: Trashing your electronics!

Hey everyone,

"An estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses EVERYDAY!"

If you haven't realized yet, I love finding out what happens to all of our trash we throw into trash cans.

By now, we all know that we need to recycle our electronics. In fact, there are signs all over NYC right now for an Electronic Recycling Event happening this weekend.

I just saw this article on NotCot via the NYTimes about how a company in Islandia, NY deals with all of our old hard drives and computer equipment. 

The short of it is that it all gets shredded on a 60 ft. long conveyor belt and made into shreds, no longer than 4" long. 

"At the end of the shredding process, the e-scrap is shipped in 2,000-pound storage containers to a company in Canada where it is ground and pulverized into its very low-tech base components: small particles of copper, plastic, steel, silver, gold, platinum. This material is then sold to companies that use it in other products." 

This seems like a long way to travel, but I can only hope that they are doing their homework and this is the most efficient way to be handling these scraps. 

I love the images: (courtesy of Maxine Hicks for the NY Times) 

Thank you to the New York Times for getting the dirt on this! 

Happy Thursday!

Niki