One of the most lucrative mining opportunities of the 21st century may be developing in Chile, and it’s not the country’s booming copper industry, or tomorrow’s star of the Atacama, lithium — it’s used phones and old computers.
That’s because companies around the world are beginning to take up the practice of urban mining — extracting gold, tungsten, platinum, iridium and other precious metals contained in everyday electronic junk, or e-waste.
So why are these companies turning toward recycling? The answer is simple: reusing elements found in e-waste is not only far more environmentally friendly than digging them up from the ground, it’s also far cheaper.
Green Technology Solutions mining subsidiary GTSO Resources is one of the emerging companies currently scouring the globe for opportunities in rare earth minerals and precious metals production.
“Even massive corporations are waking up to the fact that the computers and electronics that we throw out after two or three years contain a lot of minerals that are simply too valuable to end up in a landfill,” GTSO CEO Paul Watson told Forbes.
Source: ThisIsChile.cl