NewsBits

NewsBits

In Romania, one of the European Union's poorest nations, a social enterprise called Workshops Without Borders has found a way to help some of the country's most destitute people: recycling computers, reports the Times of Oman [1].

Patent No. 8,366,874 has been awarded to Empire Technology Development LLC, for a method of removing and sorting components on a printed circuit board.

The amount of unwanted electronics is only getting bigger and the issues surrounding how to handle them are only becoming more complicated. But an infographic [2] from Fonebank.com [3] seems to cover just about every facet of this growing industry.

The U.K.'s Environment Agency is auditing 20 local WEEE collection sites over concerns that they are not following regulations and are diverting material to other facilities, reports letsrecycle.com [4].

Designer Sean Miles has created four lines of "Walkie Talkies [5]," shoes that have fully functional handsets recycled into them. The project was sponsored by O2 Recycle, a U.K. electronics buy-back company, and each Walkie Talkie performs exactly as a normal phone would with the keypad being incorporated into the sole of each shoe.

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