How e-waste recycling can generate more precious metals than from mining.
Karan Thakkar
Your Sustainability Partner, Recycler, Shaping Indias E-Waste Management, Circular Economy Scenario
In September 2015, the United Nations came up with a set of 17 goals, called the Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs came into effect on Jan 2016 and since then have been changing the way our world functions. The aim is to build a more sustainable future for everyone on this planet. This is where e-waste recycling comes into the picture. Recycling our old gadgets and devices makes it easier to generate precious metals. The amount of gold and silver we can generate from our e-waste is more than what we produce from mining! Mining requires an enormous amount of manual labour and companies go through drastic measures to obtain the metals. They blow up mountains, dig deep into desserts and even water bodies to get resources. The reality is that they extract only 1 or 2 grams of gold from a ton of ore. It makes the whole process of extraction uneconomical and unsustainable.
The amount of e-waste generated by urban civilizations is increasing every year, and the disposal of e-waste has become a growing problem. There is an insatiable craving for newer and better electronic products which has resulted in this rapid increase of e-waste. The best solution is to recycle the various products and reuse the metals extracted from them. If derived accurately, e-waste has the capability to fulfill the increasing need for precious metals. A gram of gold can be obtained from the thorough recycling of just 41 mobile phones. Apart from gold, most electronics contain silver, aluminum, zinc germanium, indium, gallium, mercury, tin, lead and much more. All of these metals have various applications ranging from use in circuit boards to being utilized in fluorescent tubes. Some of the better methods of recycling can extract up to 75% metals from devices.
What the world needs to focus on is finding more innovative methods and processes to recycle the existing resources and increase awareness for the same. Currently, at least 70% of the e-waste goes into landfills which further leads to the contamination of water bodies due to the dangerous chemicals used in gadgets. The e-waste recycling industry is just taking off and has a long way to go.
Sources:
https://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-679871.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28802646