Electronic boards are sent to precious metal refiners. Here all types of precious metal are recaptured for the manufacturing of new products. This reduces the value of the recycled electronics making the entire recycling process less economical. The RBRC is a non-profit public service organization primarily funded by the rechargable battery manufacturers. This is where the true challenge of recycling computers lies.
Further disassembly is a manual process and costly.
The value of the labor far exceeds the value of the separated recyclable materials. For this reason significant amounts of non reusable computer equipment is shipped to the Far East for further processing. While this study is aimed primarly at the huge amounts of discarded military electronics, its findings will have significant impact on commercial recycling of consumer electronics. This study is scheduled for completion in 2002. The US Department of Energy is funding a similar study in conjunction with the University of West Virginia.