The thing is... I don't actually believe that electrical equipment is really recycled

I had something similar happen when I went to my local recycling center a year after moving into a new town. I had carefully squirreled away a pile of batteries (AA, AAA, D-cells, etc), old smoke detectors (which contain trace amounts of radioactive elements), and some unused cans of latex paint. Saved it all for the big trip to the recycling center.

The guy told me that they'd accept it all, but next time I might as well toss everything but the paint into the trash, as that's what they were going to do with it. Pretty disappointing.