Recycling of gadgets grows

— -- With the shiniest new mobile gizmos now unwrapped, the old and obsolete devices must either be bequeathed to someone else, collect dust, get gutted for parts, or simply be put to rest.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates some 789 million mobile devices are at the end of their life, ready to be recycled.

But only about 11 percent of those now considered "junk" were recycled last year, according to the EPA.

"It's got to be crazy, the number of cell phones out there," said Rita Perini, an environmental scientist at Brevard County Solid Waste Management.

The EPA says recycling them saves the energy required to mine the lead, gold, silver and other precious materials they contain and keeps toxins out of the ground and away from wells.

So where do the old devices all end up?

Some donate cell phones to soldiers or to charities. Most manufacturers have take-back programs of their own. And many keep their old phone as a backup.

Precious metals inside mobile devices eventually get shipped to Germany for smelting, said Lindsay Kissel, an spokeswoman for electronics recycler AERC Com-Cycle in Brevard County. The plastic gets recycled, too.

"For the most part, the cell phones we receive in are taken in and shredded, because there's no inherent value to reusing them," Kissel said.

In a gray warehouse off John Rodes Boulevard, a pile of old silver and black flip-style cell phones sits in a cylindrical bin, maybe a few hundred, and it took several months to stack up that much.

Nearby, workers extract motherboards, erase hard drives, and pick apart computers for resale. Like surgeons, they probe the guts and vital organs of computers, televisions, radios and other gadgets. They search for "clean" aluminum, copper rings from TVs and other reusables.

Like the cell phones, certain electronic dinosaurs are rare but bring fond memories for some: eight-tracks, Commodore 64s and various gaming pioneers.

"We're still getting Atari," said Tom Campbell, warehouse supervisor.

TVs make up the bulk -- about 60 percent -- of the e-waste the facility takes in.

Nationwide, about 17 percent of TVs get recycled, according to EPA.

Computers, which AERC branch manager Tracy DePaola estimates are about a quarter of what the site sees, get recycled at the highest percentage nationally, 40 percent, according to EPA, followed by computer displays and hard copy devices (both 33 percent).

Lately, with the down economy, also TVs have been getting recycled a different way.

Scrappers smash the TVs and take the copper band on the cathode ray tube (CRT), often leaving behind shattered glass and lead.

"Wherever they are doing this, they could be contaminating the ground if this stuff is just being strewn around," Perini said.

Overall, recycling has improved nationwide for the six items EPA studied, from 22 percent in 2006 to 27 percent in 2010.

But Perini still sees a long way to go.

"We've still got people out there that just don't have a clue," she said.