Unwanted cellphones, computers and TVs will no longer clog Edmonton's landfills, thanks to a $10-million electronic waste recycling plant that opened Tuesday.

The plant, run by a private company based in Barrie, Ont., breaks down discarded electronics into the raw materials they came from, such as plastic, copper, and aluminum and sells them for other uses.

The recycling will keep 30,000 tonnes of electronics from ending up in the landfill every year.

The plant is located in Edmonton's Waste Management Centre in the city's northwest that already houses a huge composter and other recycling services.

"Our plan is to use the Edmonton facility as our headquarters for western Canada and so we try to feed this machinery from the provinces on each side, from B.C. and from Saskatchewan and so on," said Alfred Hambsch, president of Global Electric and Electronic Processing (GEEP), the company that built the plant.

Edmonton's is only one of a handful of plants in North American that processes electronic waste, he said.

Eco-recycling stations in the city have collected a huge pile of used computer monitors, TVs and other electronics over the years, while the city looked for a company to build a facility.

The new plant will now be able to process the stockpile.