6. Recycling: breaking it up
Although donating is the best idea, most of the recycling is done by breaking it up to extract as much valuable materials and metal from it as possible, for instance lead, gold and copper. The plastic may be re-used to make other things.
There are many videos on YouTube that show how this is done. For example, this one from ABC 7 news.
https://www.youtube.com/v/Zc5un5Mf4zs
As we have already mentioned, sometimes old equipment is transported to developing countries where the working conditions and pay is very poor and this practice is considered unethical. Many recycling firms now claim to check that their suppliers do not do this.
Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: Extracting gold from equipment