The usual recyclers usually used extract most saleable hard drives, cards and memory. Some of these components have a long life in other places = $$, many recyc

The usual recyclers usually used extract most saleable hard drives, cards and memory. Some of these components have a long life in other places = $$, many recyclers fail to scrub, however responsible data practices should have this data well encrypted - but not always. Dell will contract to scrub drives but may not sell them?? Downstream recyclers will sell these. There is a large smelter, the Horne Smelter, run by Glencore https://www.glencore.com/what-we-do/recycling/operations https://www.glencore.com/what-we-do/recycling/operations There are others. These take mixed computers, printers etc and smelt them in a huge retort with flux and other materials. The steel is extracted, so is the copper, zinc, gold and other trace metals, They have an up-to-date fume scrubbed smelter with minimal pollution. The scrubbed fume dust is processed for other trace metals and then turned into a glass that is crushed and used for rockwool, asphalt etc,