Title: How E-waste Works | HowStuffWorks
Headings: How E-waste Works
How E-waste Works
E-waste Dangers
E-waste Regulations
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle E-waste
E-waste Excellence
Citation

Content: In some parts of these countries, people were dismantling electronics on street corners, instead of in recycling facilities. Advertisement
Picture something like this: Mountains of discarded TV s and computer monitors tower above the rutted streets of a low-income urban community. In order to make a living, hundreds of people work in the shadow of this heap of e-waste. Some people tend fires which burn and remove the plastic from copper wires, putting out billows of noxious smoke. Other workers swirl circuit boards in tubs of nitric and hydrochloric acid to release the solder and precious metals -- at the same time releasing gas that stings their eyes. Plastic chips, obtained from smashing devices like keyboards and computer casings, are broken into tiny pieces and carefully sorted before they too are burned and melted together into a sellable chunk. And at the end of the day, all the byproducts that have no further useful purposes, like charred circuit boards and used acid compounds, usually are dumped in open fields and rivers or are burned. These are a few examples of the recycling processes that still occur on a daily basis in some developing regions. But, as mentioned earlier, many countries are passing new laws to try to halt the process and fix the problem.