SUNRISE, Fla. -- Have you ever wondered where thrown out gizmos go? Some land in a warehouse at the edge of Sunrise, where tossed-out televisions and computers stack up like towers.

Maria Agro, a 44-year-old woman with small hands and thick bifocals, picks one up and starts prying the sprockets. She tosses them into a box where LaToya Reynolds will pick them up. Or Eduardo Fabian might try to refurbish them. Or they might be touched by the hands of the dozen or so special-needs adults responsible for recycling and refurbishing nearly all of Broward County's discarded electronics.

In Washington, D.C., elected officials are debating a climate change bill. There's lots of talk about cap-and-trade and inconvenient truths and capital footprints. More than 1,000 miles away, at the Achievement and Rehabilitation Center off Commercial Boulevard, are the quiet foot-soldiers of the green movement.

For more than half a century, the nonprofit organization has worked with people who have Down Syndrome, autism or another disability. They cater to more than 1,000 disabled children and adults - giving them the chance to receive job training, play basketball, take trips, make friends.

Most of them aren't allowed to live or drive on their own. Their passion for recycling is based on something simpler and more personal than healing the world.

When Agro places items inside her box, she's really placing herself out of one.

"It makes me feel independent," she says.

The computer crunching began in 2001, when ARC won Broward's first contract to do its electronics recycling.

At first, the center devoted 1,000 square feet to the recycling program. That's grown to 12,000 feet.

The added space has helped them deal with the exponential increase in electronics recycling. In two years, the number of people who recycle their electronics in Broward has gone from about 9,000 to 19,000, county statistics show. By year's end, numbers will climb even more because many people have thrown out their televisions after this winter's conversion to digital TV.

This is good news for Peter Foye, who directs Broward's recycling program.

If they're not recycled, the machines will end up in a landfill, where lead and other contaminants could leak and slide into drinking water. But as the public's concern about the state of the earth grows, more people are choosing to drop their electronics at a local site, where the center's workers pick them up.

"There is more awareness of the program and of the need to be more conscious about the material we throw away," Foye said.

Like her colleagues, Agro works three days a week, five hours a day. She wakes at 6 a.m., fixes herself breakfast and gets picked up by a group van that drives her to the center. There, she stuffs her small hands in gloves that are too big.

"This place is really nifty," she said. "I earn my own money, I have friends, I found a boyfriend. His name's Frank."

She sits at a station. Signs around her remind her to ask for help and to never take the gloves off. She carries a spiral notebook and opens a page to "Maria's Work Day." She pulls the sprocket, then puts down a stray mark. One down.

"I want to make sure everyone knows what work is mine," she says.

Tupac Shakur raps softly from the speakers. Behind her, 27-year-old LaToya Reynolds is hauling a crane and a deep box full of electronics. She gathers up the unused parts and wires, which will be taken to another location so they can be shredded.

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