100 years is approximately how long it takes a disposable battery to decompose.

Every year, Americans dump around $60 million worth of gold and silver in the form of disposed electronics.

While only 2pc of the trash in American landfills is e-waste, it makes up for 70pc of all toxic waste in the country.

It is estimated that global e-waste generation is growing by about 40 million tons a year

Only 20pc of global e-waste is ‘formally’ recycled. The rest is dumped in developing countries.

In 2008, 3.16m tons of e-waste was generated in the United States. Only 13pc (430,000 tons) of that was formally recycled. Rates at which electronic components are sold by scrap/e-waste importers to various dealers in Pakistan: CPU casing for Rs36/kg, motherboard for Rs500/kg, CD-ROMs for Rs40/kg and monitors for Rs300/kg.

It takes eight people working between eight and 12 hours a day to dismantle around 15 tons of e-waste in a week. One ton of dumped electronic equipment contains 17 times more gold than in a gold ore, 40 times more copper than in a copper ore.

Processor chips have the highest quantity of gold with the highest yielding chip being the Pentium 1 processor. It’s bought at Rs1,250 and generates Rs15,000 worth of gold.

Around 3,000kg of acid is consumed every month to extract gold from processors and motherboards.