EPA chief Lisa Jackson says tech companies tend to be young, hip and green. Now they need to think about recycling on the front end.

By Shelley DuBois, reporter

EPA head Lisa Jackson at Brainstorm Tech. Photo: Matt Slaby, Fortune

Garbage is money, says Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. She claims that's especially true for tech products that are built with some of the more valuable elements.

"What happens to our our smartphones and our other products is they usually end up in other countries," says Jackson. Junk hardware is exported or dumped in foreign landfills. "The really precious, hard-to-find pieces of the periodic table -- people will go to lengths to get it." People get gold, lithium and other metals out of these products by burning them, which is unsafe and inefficient -- not mention an environmental threat. More