How do you Junk your Computer?

A used PC can find life after death--but only if it comes out of the closet and goes to the recycler

In a cement-floored warehouse in upstate New York, half a dozen women sit hunched over computer workstations. Holding a heat gun in one hand and metal tweezers in the other, they pry silicon chips from circuit boards like dentists extracting little metal teeth. Down the hall, a jumble of bright green motherboards spills out onto a conveyor belt headed toward a shredder that will rip them to cracker-size pieces of plastic. And around the corner, a clean-cut guy in a black work smock takes a big hammer and smashes one hard drive after another before tossing them into a huge bin...

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