Money drives electronic waste exports.

While cell phones, printers and routers generally produce enough gold, copper, silver or aluminum to be safely recycled at a profit, old TVs and computer monitors don't.

Instead, it costs $3 to $5 to safely turn their old cathode-ray tubes into new ones, says Jim Cornwell, president of CRT Processing in Wisconsin.

By exporting the products, recyclers can ditch them or make a few dollars.

Overseas, the value of the CRTs' copper covers the cost of shipping and cheap labor.

Free recycling campaigns are suspect unless they're subsidized by electronic makers, retailers or others, export opponents say.

"Sometimes, pricing is too good to be true," says Doug Smith, director of environmental affairs for Sony. "You can guess where the material is going."

Sony pays Waste Management Recycle America, which has applied to be a Basel Action Network e-Steward, to handle its goods.

Sony consumers can drop products at Waste Management sites for free.

In 2007, the city of Denver contracted with a local firm, Executive Recycling, to handle its e-waste.

Mike Wright, CEO of rival Guaranteed Recycling Experts, warned the city that free service would not equate to responsible domestic recycling, he says.

Executive Recycling was spotlighted in a November "60 Minutes" program in which the news organization, with help from BAN, traced allegedly illegally exported e-waste from Executive's yard to Hong Kong.

The waste highlighted in the show wasn't city waste but was from a community event, says Jim McIntyre, Denver purchasing manager.

Executive says it sold the goods to a broker, expecting that they'd be re-used, and didn't know they'd be exported.

The EPA is investigating, says Eric Johnson of the EPA in Denver.

Before hiring Executive, Denver paid to recycle its e-waste.

"There was definitely a movement to see if we could lower cost," says McIntyre. Executive's contract has expired, and the city is assessing what to do.