In the pictures for that sort of newspaper article,
you'll often
seen someone burning a circuit board or chipping away at a monitor.
I don't think it's all shredded before shipment.
Circuit boards are rarely just burned these days. Many places are
turning to a method where a blade shaves off all the components, and
then shreds the boards. This gets rid of a lot of the non-copper
metals from the board. Boards are shredded very finely, ideally so the
particles are so fine that the metal and substrate are completely
separated. The substrate is then simply skimmed away from the much
heavier copper. The shaved off parts are treated in a similar process,
but obviously more complex, due to the higher number of materials
involved.
And monitors are worth a whole bunch more intact than broken. Ever
wonder why you can get a color TV these days so cheap? Think about it.
Once again, newspaper articles with BAD information. Often tree-hugger
organizations feed them information that is 20 years old, when the
Chinese scrapyards were truely hell holes. Times have changed. The
Chinese figured out long ago that the old ways just burn up money. And
the Chinese like money.
As far as shredding is concerned - many times it is done to "qualify"
for a certificate of destruction. Sometimes shredding gets in the way
of the scrapping process, actually, where manual disassembly is still
more effective.
--
Will