U.S. consumers discarded about 2.4 million tons of electronics waste (e-waste) in 2009, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This includes items such as phones, video consoles, tablets, laptops, refrigerators and televisions.

These devices contain valuable plastics such as polycarbonates that can be used for other devices and applications. In order to recycle the e-waste, a number of methods have been explored such as using chlorinated substances, such as dicholormethane (DCM), which are toxic and pricey.

Now, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of New Mexico are exploring alternative, eco-friendly ways to recycle electronic waste.

The researchers experimented with using a solvent called N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) that would be friendlier to the user and the environment. The team found that DCM and NMP recovered 87 percent and 89 percent of the polycarbonate from cell phone plastic, respectively, and furthermore NMP could be reused at least one more time without losing efficiency.

For e-waste that has more complex mixtures that would require multiple solvents, the researchers suggest that pyrolysis (heating the material at high temperatures) would be a better alternative. Using this method, the amount of mixture of four e-waste plastics was reduced by about 40 percent.

The full research can be found in the journal Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.