True both literally and figuratively, the old maxim, ‘One person’s trash is another’s treasure,’ is proving especially apt in a world where humans regularly throw away millions upon millions of consumer electronic (CE) devices. The figures are staggering, both in terms of the sheer quantity of e-waste we’re dumping on the planet, as well as the amount and value of the precious, base and industrial metals, as well as plastics, that aren’t being recovered and recycled.
Though new international efforts are under way, there remains a glaring lack of capacity when it comes to accurately and reliably quantifying and tracking e-waste both within and across borders. much less recycling it. Certain things are for sure, however: e-waste is one of the fastest growing components of human waste streams; most of it is being dumped, posing significant environmental threats; and more and more of it is being ‘exported’ to poorer countries, where laborers extract valuable materials in unsafe, harmful conditions.
Accumulating in these growing mountains of e-waste, however, is a treasure trove of precious and other metals, as well as plastics – deposits of precious metals alone that are 40-50 times richer than the ores being mined in the ground, according to experts at the first-ever Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and StEP e-Waste Academy for policymakers and small businesses co-hosted by the United Nations University (UNU) and GeSI in Accra, Ghana last week.
The growing e-waste treasure trove
There are literally billions of dollars worth of precious metals contained in the e-waste that’s being discarded and left in urban landfills. CE device manufacturers use some 320 tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver every year in churning out iPads, Galaxy Tabs, notebooks, PCs, smartphones and the growing profusion of CE devices being pumped into markets worldwide. That’s enough to add more than $21 billion a year – $16 billion in gold and $5 billion in silver – “to the rich fortunes in metals eventually available through ‘urban mining’ in developed and developing countries alike,” according to a UNU-GeIS e-waste conference synopsis.
Source: Triple Pundit
By Andrew Burger