Recycling E-waste

Recycling e-waste means sending discarded digital devices to a recycling centre or reprocessing plant so that their materials and components can be separated and recovered. Instead of being thrown away, the device is treated as a source of useful parts and materials.

What happens at a recycling centre

When collected e-waste arrives at a recycling centre, workers and machines handle it in stages:

• Devices are sorted by type and condition.
• They are dismantled so that parts such as circuit boards, drives and cables can be removed.
• The remaining materials are separated into groups, such as metals, plastics and glass.
• Recovered materials are sent on for reprocessing, where they can be used to make new products.

Separation is important because a device is a mixture of materials. Once they are separated, each material can be recovered and used again rather than being lost.

Recovering valuable materials

Digital devices contain materials — some of them valuable — that can be recovered through recycling. For example, an old games console may contain metal in its circuit board and cables, plastic in its casing, and small amounts of precious metal in its connectors. If the console is simply thrown away, those materials are not recovered and their value is lost. If it is recycled, the centre can separate the parts and recover the materials so they can be used again.