Photo Gallery Mining Old Computers For Gold
E-waste recycling in South Africa: The African continent serves as the West's dumping ground for electronic refuse.
A lot of metal is used in the production of mobile phones and computers: Worldwide, 15 percent of cobalt production, 13 percent of palladium and 3 percent of the gold and silver is used annually to manufacture these products.
The majority of the metal used in the production of computers and laptops ends up at the dump.
A Chinese lorry loaded with electronics rubbish. According to the UNEP report, China will have 2.3 million tones of electrical refuse in 2010.
In these mountains of electronic rubbish there are millions of computer circuit boards, which yield 250 grams of gold per ton, better than the average gold mine's yields.
In 2007, sales of mobile telephones reached one billion.
Recycling in India: Most recycling of e-waste is done by hand.
This diagram outlines the value of materials in old mobile phones. But when remnants of scrap electronics left behind in dumps are set on fire, they become toxic for man and the environment.
In 2008 the 2.7 billion worth of gold, silver, copper, palladium and cobalt was used to make computers.
