<story><title>Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akkartik</author><text>A not-unreasonable penalty for risking pollution of his ground water, especially since he probably did the same thing to electronics many times before. I can&amp;#x27;t believe nobody is talking about this. Illegal in many US states.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=132204954&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;templates&amp;#x2F;transcript&amp;#x2F;transcript.php?story...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>buro9</author><text>The actual story was sourced entirely from this reddit post:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rilcj/as_a_person_who_did_not_invest_early_i_made_a_gif/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;Bitcoin&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;1rilcj&amp;#x2F;as_a_person_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which was sourced entirely from &amp;quot;someone in the IRC channel&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Whether it&amp;#x27;s true or not is one thing, but if it is then the reddit source also says:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; He went to the &amp;quot;recycling centre&amp;quot; and they showed him around.&lt;p&gt;This makes some sense, I&amp;#x27;ve &amp;#x27;recycled&amp;#x27; before at places like  this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/spacewaye&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hounslow.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;spacewaye&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;You go along, separate your stuff into several different piles. Pay fees for things like fridges, CRTs, etc. Then you leave.&lt;p&gt;The thing is... I don&amp;#x27;t actually believe that electrical equipment is really recycled. Stuff like monitors may have the most toxic bits removed, but I strongly suspect that all other electrical equipment is just put into landfill as-is.&lt;p&gt;If the story is all true then the facility in question is this one:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newport.gov.uk/_dc/index.cfm?fuseaction=wasterecycle.centres&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newport.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;_dc&amp;#x2F;index.cfm?fuseaction=wasterecy...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which is advertised as a recycling centre.&lt;p&gt;Which means the guy has done all that he could to get it recycled, and that it&amp;#x27;s the authorities and government services themselves who are just dumping stuff in landfill even when it was delivered as recycling.&lt;p&gt;All that said... if it &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; recycled as advertised, then the chances of it still existing would be closer to zero than the current scenario.</text></comment>
<story><title>Missing hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akkartik</author><text>A not-unreasonable penalty for risking pollution of his ground water, especially since he probably did the same thing to electronics many times before. I can&amp;#x27;t believe nobody is talking about this. Illegal in many US states.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=132204954&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;templates&amp;#x2F;transcript&amp;#x2F;transcript.php?story...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eterm</author><text>Since this is in Europe, it&amp;#x27;s probably better to refer to the European legislation.&lt;p&gt;However, it looks like the UK implementation of the WEEE[1] is fairly narrow in scope.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electronic_Equipment_Directive#UK_implementation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Waste_Electrical_and_Electronic...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>