7/7/12
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Devin Coldewey
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Billions of dollars of gold left unclaimed in
waste electronics
Devin Coldewey / msnbc.com
Your computer is a gold mine — literally. Though a very small one. Yet
even when millions of computers and components are thrown away
every year, the precious metals locked up in them are going to waste.
Billions in gold, silver, and other rare elements are being wasted by
inefficient e-waste management.
Every year over 300 tons of gold are used to create the world's
electronics; that's 7.7 percent of the world's supply, and valued today at
around $21 billion. Its high malleability and conductivity have made it
an excellent material for certain components, such as the interface
between memory and the computer's motherboard. Since all that's
necessary is a layer a few microns thick, you could take apart dozens of
PCs and only get a few dollars' worth of gold. Tom's Hardware did just
that and ended up with something the size of a BB.
When done on an industrial scale, though, isolating these precious
metals can be useful, perhaps even profitable. But generally poor ewaste management worldwide means that only around 15 percent of
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7/7/12
Billions of dollars of gold left unclaimed in waste electronics ‑ Technolog on msnbc.com
the total is actually reclaimed, leaving billions sitting in landfills or
dissolved in waste water. The situation was discussed last week at the
first-ever Global e-Sustainability Initiative, held in Ghana.
The technology exists to do it properly: a modern facility can recapture
up to 95 percent of the gold being thrown away. Developing countries,
however, which import e-waste by the ton, are very inefficient at
dismantling and recovering it. More importantly, the work of sifting
through the e-wreckage is extremely dangerous and often done by
children, who run the risk of poisoning and injury every day for
pennies. Ghana is itself a major e-waste dump, which accounts for the
location of the conference.
"Mining" these urban waste collections could be profitable and
ecologically beneficial, but at the moment not economically feasible.
Factories must be built, processes developed, and the waste itself
transported and handled. Gold mining operations have infrastructure in
place to pull the metal from ore, and it would take a major investment
(not to mention international cooperation) to establish a global workflow
for e-waste. That's what the Initiative aims to foster, with cooperation
from the United Nations and willing companies.
With the price of gold up a huge amount in the last decade, riskier
collection ventures may get a green light and the billions sequestered in
toxic e-waste could be reclaimed. For now, though, the treasure is still
locked away.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal
website is coldewey.cc.
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