Recycling Gold, Silver, And Copper ....interesting Article !

I read in the May/June issue of Audubon magazine an interesting article about "recycling" gold, silver, and copper in cell phones and other electronics.
It said that "Every ton of cell phones contains more than 12 ounces of gold, nearly 8 pounds of silver, and 286 pounds of copper !" How interesting is THAT !...
It goes on to say that "Circuit boards contain more gold by volume than does gold ore."
The worlds largest precious metal recycling company is located in Belgium, Umicore Precious Metal Refining (none are located in the U.S. who recycle cell phones and other electronics and "smelt" the precious metal from them.) (so the article says)
They call it "e-scrapping" and say only five such smelters exist in the world. Roughly 80 percent of the "recycled electronics" in the United States is shipped to poor nations with lackluster or poorly enforced environmental and health regulations. Electronic waste harbors roughly half of all the elements on the periodic table, from arsenic to zinc. Left unchecked, these toxins can cause enormous damage.
China supposedly has a law since 2002 banning such "recycling practices" but was proven to be very lax in controlling it. Now it is a BOOMING practice for poor people in countries such as Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Africa, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan......but the biggest...still China they say. China is ravenous for raw materials. And they show pictures of these nations poor people sitting in HUGE piles of cell phones and other gadgets with a chisel and a blow torch stripping off PVC from copper wire in all of this stuff and to get at all the other materials they want.......hard reality is......they said these "villagers" are making $2.00 a day doing this for "the big man" who runs the operation ! These "lots" were SO BIG that they used bull dozers to push these cell phones, etc. around and the piles they say are commonly THREE STORIES HIGH!....Shipments come in by the dump truck loads continuously all day long......and they said that the "loads" come mostly from the United States, Japan, and Korea.
noteworthy too: There is as much as 220 milligrams of gold in a single desktop computer they say.....
and in Africa the "trade" in electronic waste is different than in Asia. They say that a MASSIVE electronics trade is robust in EVERY major port city on the Continent and that it is completely uncontrolled and there exists no infrastructure to deal with this even if governments tried to do so. Materials that they seek are extracted, then the what's left is just dumped onto the ground or into lakes and rivers.
So, for me, the moral of this article is this..........when you think you're "recycling" something, whether it's cell phones or anything else......BE SURE THAT IT'S NOT BEING "SHIPPED" OVERSEAS TO THESE THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES OR DEVELOPING NATIONS FOR "RECYCLING" !........
There are people making money off of this down through the WHOLE PROCESS with recycling electronics........and other than these five companies mentioned above, this "recycling" is being proven to be a ghastly unsafe illegal practice for the enviroment and human life. Remember 80% of OUR countries electronic waste IS SENT to poor nations with poorly enforced environmental and health organizations and NOT sent to the five European companies who handle it the proper way.
I don't know, after reading the article and thinking how so many Americans seem to recognize the good theory of "recycling", but don't have a clue what's really happening to it.....they just assume they're doing a good thing by giving it to a recycling company !
Plus the fact about "each ton of junk cell phones producing 12 ounces of gold, 8 pounds of silver, and 286 pounds of copper" I thought was incredible !.....