The recycling industry is already very much established in this area - I am just a hobbyist with the gold bug.

They do in fact already recycle all components in all electronics here already - even the plastic gets shredded, and sold by the ton to be remade into something else.

We can no longer dispose electronics into the general landfill - the electronics, and all chemical products, and a few other items, like rubber, are separated out. Landfill is now mostly organic stuff that breaks down quickly - to protect the water table from toxic contamination. The lower Great Lakes are starting to make a real comeback as a result.

For the hobbyist, there are levels of recycling you can choose to participate in. I like to harvest the gold - but there are buyers who will purchase the bulk cards and chips online for a flat rate per pound or kilo - you ship the boxes, and they pay you through Paypal or send a check or something. Then they harvest the gold etc, from a much larger source supply line. Like I said above, if you want to do this as a business it will work as long as you have a steady supply of old hardware.

In England, by law, all electronics must go to a registered recycling company now - so an entire third sector industry has sprung up around this law. In America, most jurisdictions simply follow a private sector approach similar to the scrapping of automobiles. Certain environmental regs sometimes apply - but that is usually about it. Canada is about halfway between the two.

Treasure hunting? Why yes indeed - there are certain older CPU's that do contain a heavy gold content - back in the day these CPU's could contain upwards to 1/2 ounce of gold apiece - (when gold retailed at a very low price per ounce) - the CPU's themselves would sell for more than $1000 each. Gold is the preferred metal for expensive electronics, in part because it does not rust - neither does it age. After a while you get to know which specific older equipment - actual makes and model numbers - contain the best content. For example - the first generation of the Pentium Pro CPU has a very high gold content - several hundred dollars worth of recoverable gold, inside each CPU at today's prices. There is also a certain Toshiba big screen television - most of which are scrap now - that has a heavy gold CPU inside it. Half of those big screens also have high quality Fresnel lenses in them - retailing on Ebay for $400 apiece last time I looked. Old stuff from the seventies and eighties is usually also excellent - like old AT&T telephone switching equipment.

Like any hobby, the longer you spend at it, the better you get at doing it.

You see those big screen's at the side of the road when people throw them out - I grab every one - some people go looking for them. I just grab one if I am happening by. Fresnel lenses are amazing:)

Microwave ovens have a small amount of silver and copper, etc - but the big find there is the microwave wave guide emitter - you might be needing a bunch of those soon, also the small Bell satellite dishes. The robots are coming - they can be harvested too:)

Pro tip with the hard drive magnets - metal recyclers prefer if your metal waste is separated out so they don't have to sort it. Copper is easy because of the color, but painted steel and aluminum can be hard to separate - use the hard drive magnet - it picks up the steel, but not the aluminum.