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What is inside a flat-screen TV?

A flat-screen TV is mostly glass and plastic sheets on a steel back, with a few circuit boards and a pair of small speakers behind the panel. Most of what it gives back is steel, aluminum and copper. The panel and its backlight also hold traces of indium and gallium, which are rarely recovered from old products.12

Drawing of a representative edge-lit LED television, not a specific product, standing on its feet on a bench and seen from behind with its plastic back cover off and leaning beside it: the steel back chassis carrying the power supply board with its transformer and inductors wound in copper, chokes, capacitors and two finned aluminum heat sinks, the main board with its processor, memory, tuner can and a row of side sockets, the thin timing board with flat cables to the panel, a ribbon between the boards, the AC inlet and cord, and a small speaker with a ferrite magnet at each lower corner; one upper corner of the panel stack is opened in steps to show the reflector, the light guide plate, the diffuser and prism films and the LCD glass, with a strip of LEDs on an aluminum bar along the edge.
A representative edge-lit LED television seen from behind, with its back cover off and leaning beside it. The power board, the main board and the two speakers sit on the back chassis, and one corner of the panel is opened in layers to show the films, the glass and the strip of LEDs along its edge.

Materials in a flat-screen TV

Main materials
MaterialWhere it sits
SteelMost of its weightBack chassis, stand and screws
AluminumFrame and backlight heat spreaders
CopperPower supply, cables and speaker coils
Trace materials
MaterialWhere it sits
TinSolder on its boards
SiliconProcessor chips and panel transistors
SilverSolder and board finishes
GoldChip and connector contacts
PalladiumCeramic capacitors on its boards
IndiumClear conductive coating in the panel
GalliumLEDs of the backlight
Rare earthsBacklight phosphors, some speaker magnets

What a flat-screen TV of this kind most likely holds. Amounts are given in words, not weights, because content depends on the design.

How a flat-screen TV is recycled

A television is typically taken apart by hand before anything is shredded: the back cover and the stand come off, and the circuit boards, the cables and the speakers are lifted out.3 The boards are sorted by grade and commonly sent to a copper smelter, where the copper collects their gold, silver and palladium for refining.4 The steel back chassis is separated with magnets and the aluminum frame and heat sinks with eddy-current separators, and each is melted into new metal.56 Cables are chopped so that the copper falls away from its insulation, and the windings of the power board follow the other copper to smelting and refining.78 The panel itself is mostly glass and plastic film. The clear coating on the glass typically contains indium and the backlight LEDs are made with gallium, but most indium recycling uses scrap from manufacturing, and gallium is not reported as recovered from discarded products.910 Whether a speaker magnet holds rare earths depends on the design; in a television it is typically ferrite, which holds none.11

More on each stream: steel and aluminum, copper, precious metals.

Find it in the games and recycle it

Sources

  1. Mineral commodity summariesUSGS
  2. Recycling Rates of Metals: A Status ReportUnited Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel (2011), Appendix F, Table F1 and accompanying text, pp. 35-37 (gallium, indium, tantalum, tungsten); Appendix D, Table D1, p. 31 (tin); main text, p. 18
  3. Current recycling innovations to utilize e-waste in sustainable green metal manufacturingPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, vol. 382, 2024, doi:10.1098/rsta.2023.0239 (peer-reviewed, open access, CC BY 4.0; PubMed Central copy PMC11531906), Section 3 'E-waste recycling strategies for metal extraction', subsection (a) 'Pretreatment'
  4. Metal Recycling: Opportunities, Limits, InfrastructureUnited Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel (2013)
  5. Metal Recycling: Opportunities, Limits, InfrastructureUnited Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel (2013)
  6. Recycling is the primary energy efficiency technology for aluminum and steel manufacturingU.S. Energy Information Administration, Today in Energy (May 9, 2014), Article body, sections on steel (electric arc furnaces) and aluminum (secondary production)
  7. Copper Recycling in the United States in 2004 (U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1196-X)U.S. Geological Survey, Page X23, paragraph on old scrap handling (wire chopping, fluidized bed, cable stripping); page X12, 'Wire goes through a chopping operation', with footnote 10
  8. AP-42, Compilation of Air Pollutant Emission Factors, Section 12.9: Secondary Copper SmeltingU.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Section 12.9.2.2 'Smelting', pages 12.9-1 and 12.9-3
  9. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: IndiumU.S. Geological Survey (February 2026), Domestic Production and Use, p. 1; Recycling, p. 1
  10. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: GalliumU.S. Geological Survey (February 2026), Domestic Production and Use, p. 1; Recycling, p. 1
  11. Rare Earth Elements—End Use and RecyclabilityUS Geological Survey, Magnets section and illustrated applications

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