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I know a guy who has done this as a business for at least the last 20 years. Nice little business model.

That guy you know is doing the world a favor.

This is an alternative: <http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china>;

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory).

I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

Production capacity for gold exceeds 100 tonnes per year according to http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.com/metals_products/precio...

Right you are. According to p. 9 of this 2009 Umicore presentation production of gold at the Hoboken plant is 25 tonnes/year (still 1% of world mining production):

http://impeltfs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/umicore-impel-...

My apologies. I've corrected my sentence to use the article "an" instead of "the".

Of course, the pictures you link to are the norm, and clean recycling very much the exception...

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