Reason for Recycling Electronics

According to Pennsylvania State Law under Act 108: As of January 23, 2013, “Covered Devices” may no longer be accepted at the Centre County Solid Waste Authority’s Transfer Station as municipal solid waste. Instead, all covered devices must be recycled.
Electronics consist of valuable resources, such as precious metals, copper, and engineered plastics, all of which require considerable energy to process and manufacture.
Recycling electronics recovers valuable materials, conserves virgin resources, and results in lower environmental emissions (including greenhouse gases) than making products from virgin materials.

For example:

Recycling one hundred pounds of covered devices instead of sending them to the landfill prevents the release of 263 lbs. of CO2e, or the equivalent of burning 13 gallons of gas.
By recycling 100 million cell phones, approximately 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver, and 35,274 pounds of copper can be retrieved, which in turn saves millions of tons of rocks and soil from being mined and moved to extract these metals.
Each year, Americans toss over $60 million in gold and silver alone into landfills.
Recycling one cell phone saves enough energy to power a laptop for 44 hours.
Each year, a staggering 130 million cell phones are thrown away. Recycling these cell phones could save enough energy to power 24,000 homes for a year.
In 2016, only 17% of the e-waste generated in the United States was recycled.

Data Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2019.