I prefer ours compared to a pile of trash, all sort of combustion problems with dioxines etc.

By the way, one of the largest recycler of scrap electronic equipment, also containing large amounts of gold, is the Noranda smelter in Ryon-Noranda, Quebec. I visited there once and they have warehouses full of trashed computers. The plastic works as fuel and the goodies(gold, silver and copper) are collected as part of their process

Also if my memory does not fail me, there is(used to be at least) lots of gold in the Ottawa river in the silt close to the water effluent outlet from the Mint.

The Falconbridge smelter is also a huge recycler of scrap, for them the target is more the platinum group metals, in addition to nickel, cobalt and copper. These metals are used often as catalysts and they are contained usually on some porous ceramics to create high surface areas. Again, this stuff is fed into some of their reactors to be recovered.

One huge danger with recycling is that occasionally some smart ... tries to get rid of some radioactive material packed in with other recycled materials. To avoid this all smelters recycling large amount of trash have radioactive sensors and every truck entering is monitored. The same for scrap steel recyclers.

Recyclers are a tough bunch, after Toronto got the nice large recycling bins made of aluminum, some smart guy took it literarly and indeed removed the nuts holding them down and recycled the recyling bins! That is inovation