The company won approval from environmental authorities in Canada to try large-scale recycling of 3,000 tonnes of discarded electronics at its Trail smelter in the country's westernmost province of British Columbia.

If it works, the smelter will eventually take in up to 20,000 tonnes of electronics waste per year, said Tech Cominco spokesman Mark Edwards.

"Some of our metals end up in products that might be thrown out eventually," he said.

"As a society, we tend to turn out these products faster and faster, so there is an accumulation of televisions and computers and electronic devices in landfills. This effort just completes the circle."

The plan will not be profitable. In fact, the sale of the recovered metals will not even cover the costs of recycling the materials, he noted. But Tech Cominco hopes to nurture goodwill with environmentalists by keeping the electronics out of landfills.

The electronics will be pulverized into tiny bits and fed into furnaces which will incinerate any plastic, wood and other flammable parts while melted lead, zinc and cadmium will be separated, recast and sold.

There are several kilograms of lead in a television and zinc is selling at a premium on world markets, Edwards noted.

Any copper, iron ore or trace amounts of silver and gold will find their way into residual material used in the production of cement.

"Everything will be burned as fuel or recycled," Edwards said.

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