Susanne Rotter is professor and recycling expert at the technical university here in Berlin.   We talk about recycling and extracting valuable minerals from our trash.DW-TV: Extracting minerals from metals is a long and somewhat tedious process, and requires lots of technology. Is it worth it? To speak more about recycling and extracting valuable minerals from our trash, we’re joined by recycling expert Susanna Rotter, a professor at the technical university here in Berlin. As we saw there in that last report, extracting minerals from metals is a long and somewhat tedious process, and requires lots of technology. Is it worth it? Susanne Rotter: I think it's worth it because in cars and other products we are using more and more valuable substances which are worth recovering because the primary mining has much bigger impact than the recycling. Which articles are the most valuable in terms of recycling? At the moment it's very much driven by metals, many metals, the trace metals and trace metals like gold and palladium and many others. Lots of our garbage — old washing machines, old computers, cars and so on -- are sent to developing countries to be disposed of... are lots of valuable minerals then being lost in that process? Yes, this export. Most of them are not exported as waste to be recycled. They are exported as second-hand good and are used for a longer time. But it is a loss for the recycling industry because there you barely have any recycling networks that are collecting the waste there. You just came back from India. What can you tell us about recycling practices there? Specifically for cars, electronics and chips they have a very developed recycling sector in terms of extent and it's mainly informal activity. So under not very nice conditions, severe environmental and health impacts, they are recovering part of the valuable materials. And it's a big problem in India. Let's talk about the environmental impact f...