WALFORD – The combination of television's switch to digital with the plummeting price of flat screen TVs has prompted thousands of people to buy new TVs. But, those old sets can contain a lot of chemicals and it's not safe to dump them in a landfill.

Walford's Midwest Electronic Recovery recycles and processes TVs and business is booming. Some TVs and computer monitors die a slow, painful death. Others burn out before their time. In the end, many end up in Walford to prepare to be reborn.

"The newer technology is coming in and making the old obsolete,” President Dave Long said. Don't call these guys grim reapers. No one's mourning this death.

"I love it. I really like doing the job,” worker Maurice Porter said.

Midwest Electronic Recovery recycles about 600,000 pounds of electronics every month. More than half of those come from TVs and computer monitors.

"I have come across TVs people have had since the 50s," Porter said.

Each TV takes about five minutes to tear apart. Workers unscrew the backing, rip out the guts and send the tube up into a special machine.

"After ten minutes of learning how to do it, it'll be like you're a pro at it,” Porter said.

When tubes reach the top, the machine smashes the glass and spits it into a bin.

"[The machine] filters out all the dust...creating the perfectly clean working environment,” Long said.

Unlike some other recycling centers, nothing goes into the dumpster. Workers recycle every bit of plastic, metal and glass right here in Iowa.

"There are too many people out there exporting them to third world countries...to areas you just cannot document what is actually happening,” Long said.

So even though it may seem like a graveyard, it's far from a final resting place. Within weeks, pieces of the old TVs and monitors will turn into something high tech.

Midwest Electronic Recovery is Iowa's largest electronic recycling business.

The company works with twenty-seven landfills in the state and recycles about six and a half million pounds of electronics every year.

If you'd like to recycle an old TV or computer monitor, visit http://www.mcbia.com/ewaste for details.

E-mail Mark Geary at Mark.Geary@kcrg.com or follow him on Twitter.