Here's a clip form a programme about luxury goods. This is about the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sch78)
It's pretty depressing. There's no kind of sensible plan to recovering useful stuff. Seeing a boy smashing polyester / polystyrene capacitors off an old PCB with a rock so he can sell them is just grim.
All the lead, tin, copper, heavy metals, leach into the soil and thus water supply. Wires and cables are burnt to get rid of the insulation and leave copper - these fires happen in the open air, with no kind of masking.
I love the idea of tiny, cheap, single purpose electronics. But often the quality is not great; and they're totally locked down. Manufacturers should learn that leaving some test pads on the boards, and putting a few documents on some websites, means that hackers will tinker, and that can lead to a lot of publicity.