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Why Junk Electronics Should Be Big Business
An anonymous reader writes "We've heard before about the problem of e-waste — computers and other high-tech gadgets that are tossed into landfills or shipped off to third-world countries when they reach end-of-life. But this article makes the case that there's a huge business opportunity here, with billions of dollars going to waste in the form of metals that could be reclaimed from these old and broken devices. 'At current rates of production, $16 billion (or 320 tons) in gold and $5 billion (7500 tons) in silver are put into media tablets, smartphones, computers, and other devices annually. With growth in demand for smartphones and media tablets showing little sign of diminishing in the next few years, the flow of gold and silver from deposit to waste facilities is only likely to accelerate. ... StEP claims that, in developing nations, 50 percent of the gold in e-waste is lost due to "crude dismantling processes" and only 25 percent of the remainder is recoverable due to the rudimentary technology to hand. In contrast, 25 percent of gold is lost to electronics dismantling in developed nations, and modern facilities are able to recover 95 percent of the rest.'"
I'd also be curious as to know what is meant by "lost" and how they plan to deal with the tons of arsenic, beryllium and other crap in our e-waste
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
There's gold in them thar fills!
Not a single figure in TFA to say how much it would cost to recover a few grams of gold from each device. Or what toxic sludge would be left and how much it would cost to deal with that.
People dealing with e-waste KNOW THERE IS GOLD IN IT. They're not idiots. If they could recover it and make a profit, they'd be doing it. They don't need some twat to tell them "Hey, you're throwing away gold!".
Noble metal refineries can out multiple components from ores and make a profit. Materials are enriched in our gadgets when compared to ore. I'm sure there is actually money to be made here.
C'mon, y'all 'fess up! Your e-waste never becomes e-waste, because it is stuffed into drawers, closets, basements, or the rusty Chevy up on cinder blocks on the front lawn, like me. It could be a magnetic storage disk with the diameter of a Flying Saucer, and I still won't throw it away. That 'ole PCMCIA IBM Token Ring card? I'll be glad someday that I have that bastard!
Hans Reiser proved his own guilt when he claimed that he threw away his car seat.
Geeks don't toss out nuthin'!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste. A fair share of it is shipped to Nigeria! There, people repair all the devices they can and sell it in a huge street market, the largest electronic market in the world. This means that a huge lot of electronic devices get to be used again instead of polluting the environment, and all the Nigerians have cheap cell phones, laptops, TVs and DVD players. Stuff that we consider outdated, they use with pride. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
We in the West are too pampered for our own good. I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly. I don't know anyone that still uses CRTs. I won't waste my money on an LCD TV before my current set breaks down. But most of people I know ditched perfectly good TV sets to replace them with LCDs. The same with cell phones, laptops, and even fridges, washing machines, or even cars!
Even when the devices don't get a second life, I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash. I don't know about the USA, but here in Europe we recycle most of our waste. Be it paper, plastic, metals, fluorescent bulbs, all kinds of oils and fats, electronic devices, everything gets recycled.
Non rhetorical question: How much worse is mining and processing the equivalent ore?
The swedish Boliden built an new facitlity in order to extract gold and other metals from e-waste. E-waste yields 100g/1000kg of material compared to 8g/1000kg of ore.
http://www.boliden.com/Press/News/2012/New-facility-makes-Boliden-world-leader/
I wouldn't think there is much Be in e-waste. I know it was used in BeO insulators, but they are quite rare. I'd think these days it is mostly relegated to aerospace - things like that where you just can't compromise.
AlN is supposed to be pretty close in performance, so even that may be moving out.
For arsenic, it's only used in semiconductors AFAIK, like GaAs and GaAsP LEDs, some fast transistors, etc. But in all of these cases, it's a crystal (and generally epoxy encapsulated), so I'm not sure how much arsenic would leach from it. I Suppose powder from mechanical damage and possible thermal (from reclamation process? or incineration) decomposition products would be considerably more problematic, though.
Keep in mind these would be in pretty minute quantity compared to the (historical at least) asston of lead on every board. Even the copper is fairly bad for aquatic life, IIRC. (seem to recall that humans can process it, but it bioaccumulates in marine life, like various heavy metals do to us).
Sent from my PDP-11
I work for a company that takes care of e-waste. The problem we face is that many times we are outbid by companies that then ship the waste off shore or simply stripped and tossed. The company I work for actually has teams in our warehouse that comb through every piece and find pieces that are available for resale. Those pieces that aren't are them dismantled, categorized and shipped to certified recyclers so that each and every piece that can possibly be recycled is. We even recycle most of our shipping materials. There are costs associated with recycling your systems, sure, but it's better than paying the EPA fines if your caught even once. Also, some recyclers, including the one I work for, will actually pay you for your electronics in some cases, depending on type and condition. Many times there are lots of things that we could be doing differently as a society to increase our ecologic awareness and minimize our e-waste impact. We simply don't because it's not the most convenient option. As I'm not trying to plug my company, I'll leave out the name. If your interested ask for it in the comments.
All humans total mine approximately 1714 tons of gold per year in the entire world so I have a hard time believing that 500-micron thick electroplated electronic contact pins result in 320 tons like the article states. Consider how many solid gold rings are made in jewelry stores in every country in the world and how almost every married person has one, it's probably closer to a 10000:1 ratio instead of 5:1 like the article implies.
Smelting as you describe would release large quantities of metal oxides with the smoke and fumes and contaminate a large quantity of glass with lead oxide and other metallic oxides that are soluble in molten glass. That's why glass is used for flux when smelting gold. The oxides that gas off can be hazardous, and the glass slag contains lead so use as little as possible.
Before smelting, the material needs to be shredded, crushed and ground into fine particles and as much of the non metallic material as possible should be separated. Make the smelt as small as practical. Less material to heat, means lower energy consumption and fewer byproducts.
Once you smelt out the base metals you are left with precious metals: gold, silver, copper and platinum group metals (PGM). At this point the silver and copper can be separated from the gold and PGM using the Miller process. Further refining of the gold once used the Wohlwill process which is expensive because of the quantities of auric acid required. Commercial gold refiners today don't talk about their processes.