Pulling valuable metals from e-waste makes financial sense

Authored by acs.org and submitted by mvea

“Urban Mining of E‑Waste is Becoming More Cost-Effective Than Virgin Mining”

Electronic waste — including discarded televisions, computers and mobile phones — is one of the fastest-growing waste categories worldwide. For years, recyclers have gleaned usable parts, including metals, from this waste stream. That makes sense from a sustainability perspective, but it’s been unclear whether it’s reasonable from an economic viewpoint. Now researchers report in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology that recovering gold, copper and other metals from e-waste is cheaper than obtaining these metals from mines.

Projections indicate that about 50 million tons of e-waste will be discarded around the world in 2018, according to the United Nations’ Global E-waste Monitor report. This type of waste contains a surprising amount of metal. For example, a typical cathode-ray tube TV contains almost a pound of copper and more than half a pound of aluminum, though it only holds about 0.02 ounces of gold. Xianlai Zeng, John A. Mathews and Jinhui Li obtained data from eight recycling companies in China to calculate the cost for extracting such metals from e-waste, a practice known as “urban mining.” Expenses included the costs for waste collection, labor, energy, material and transportation, as well as capital costs for the recyclers’ equipment and buildings. These expenses are offset by government subsidies and by revenue from selling recovered materials and components. The researchers conclude that with these offsets, it costs 13 times more to obtain these metals from ore than from urban mining. The researchers also draw implications for the economic prospects of urban mining as an alternative to virgin mining of ores, based on the “circular economy,” or recirculation of resources.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Social Science Fund of China.

The American Chemical Society is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

fordfan919 on April 6th, 2018 at 14:01 UTC »

Its even cheaper when you send that e-waste to a third world country to be extracted by children using unsafe and dirty techniques.

DrWigglesMcGulicutty on April 6th, 2018 at 13:17 UTC »

Not sure why this study pretends to be a new idea. This is already a massive industry. Values of e-waste components are well established.

mvea on April 6th, 2018 at 12:08 UTC »

The title of the post is a copy and paste from parts of the first and second paragraphs of the linked academic press release here:

Now researchers report in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology that recovering gold, copper and other metals from e-waste is cheaper than obtaining these metals from mines.

The researchers conclude that with these offsets, it costs 13 times more to obtain these metals from ore than from urban mining.

Journal Reference:

Xianlai Zeng , John A. Mathews, and Jinhui Li.

Urban Mining of E-Waste is Becoming More Cost-Effective Than Virgin Mining.

Environmental Science & Technology, 2018

DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b04909

Link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b04909

Abstract:

Stocks of virgin-mined materials utilized in linear economic flows continue to present enormous challenges. E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams, and threatens to grow into a global problem of unmanageable proportions. An effective form of management of resource recycling and environmental improvement is available, in the form of extraction and purification of precious metals taken from waste streams, in a process known as urban mining. In this work, we demonstrate utilizing real cost data from e-waste processors in China that ingots of pure copper and gold could be recovered from e-waste streams at costs that are comparable to those encountered in virgin mining of ores. Our results are confined to the cases of copper and gold extracted and processed from e-waste streams made up of recycled TV sets, but these results indicate a trend and potential if applied across a broader range of e-waste sources and metals extracted. If these results can be extended to other metals and countries, they promise to have positive impact on waste disposal and mining activities globally, as the circular economy comes to displace linear economic pathways.