[spencey]

Back in 2009 my family member was a partial owner of an electronics recycling facility in northern California. I worked in warehouse at times and I can tell you from experience that everything was incinerated or recycled. They had huge deals at the time with Apple and Lucent. Part of the deal was that all the precious metals that were recovered were given back to the companies for manufacturing. Most surprising thing for me was that the cost of insurance was one of the most expensive things on the books because of the amount of precious metals they had on hand at any given time.

[Scoundreller]

Also, the big manufacturers do NOT want you to re-use what they made.

They'd much prefer it all get melted down and make their new equipment inputs much cheaper.