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

I know little about this end of the business, other to know to stay away from it. Anyone that uses pulls in a production environment is asking for trouble. I bet they just have guys do it manually. -- Will

Richard wrote: At the Surplus Exchange in Kansas City, they fill the containers, though not with much care of the condition of the equipment. They did totally destroy such equipment as 360's and 370's that unfortunately went thru there before I ever was able to find out about what they had had there. I think such as what was sold from Chile in the last 2 or 3 years is what you will find in China, which was just bits and pieces. Jim