URBAN MINING TURNS GADGETS INTO GOLD
Recyling technology finds valuable resources in old electronics
Given how quickly technology changes, it’s no surprise we’re replacing our older gadgets more often than ever before. Two trends are fueling our desire to upgrade: “lightweighting” and “miniaturization.”
Today’s gadgets and gear are considerably thinner, lighter and more powerful than in the past. Your big old CRT television from a few years back is now a flatter and more energy-efficient LCD or LED screen, and perhaps you’re planning to upgrade it again with an even more svelte 4K Ultra HD Smart television. Laptops have undergone a similar transformation.
With miniaturization, products get tinier — think of the small but loud Bluetooth speakers that are a fraction of the size of yesterday’s standing floor speakers — while others are combined in a multifunction device. A smartphone, for example, has evolved into a digital Swiss Army Knife that now takes the place of numerous gadgets we used to buy separately, including an MP3 player, digital camera, camcorder, GPS navigation unit, pedometer, portable gaming system, flashlight, and, oh yes, a phone.
Over and over
But here’s something you might not think about: What happens to these devices when you recycle them?
The journey of our old tech is a fascinating one: from manual disassembly to high-tech shredding, to sorting and separating, it’s an incredible process that transforms our out-of-use electronics into raw, reusable materials, where almost nothing goes to waste.
If it’s recycled properly in Ontario, your end-of-life electronics go through a hands-on extraction process to remove their precious metals, plastic and glass and feed the creation of new products. Along with keeping old tech out of landfills, this kind of “urban mining” to recover the valuable materials at their core means these resources don’t need to be mined from the earth.
“One of the beauties of mineral resources is the luxury of using them multiple times,” says Alan Nursall, host of the Alan Nursall Experience on the Discovery Channel and CEO of the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton. “Once they come out of the ground, we have a responsibility to repurpose these durable and useful materials.”
Nursall spent 30 years in Sudbury, Ont., where, he says, “so much of the economic value of that community surrounds the importance of mineral resources.
“We’ll always have a need to mine raw materials, but once they’ve been mined, with the right sort of care and stewardship, they can be used over and over and over again — whether they’re in a cell phone, computer monitor, or other consumer electronics.”
More materials, less energy
Whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, computer or television, you might be surprised at what a difference recycling can make. More than 80 per cent of the materials in a smartphone can be recycled. The average mobile phone battery contains 3.5 grams of copper. Added together, one million recycled mobile phones can yield 25 kg of gold, 50 kg of silver, 9 kg of palladium, and more than 9 tons of copper.
Another benefit to recycling your tech: it takes considerably less energy to extract valuable materials from old electronics compared to the energy it takes to extract it out of the ground (“primary production” as conventional mining is called), making it even less taxing on the planet.
“Extracting raw materials is incredibly energy-intensive and complicated,” says Nursall. “It’s an important practice — many Canadians have a livelihood that relies on it — but in the 21st century, we can develop parallel processes to ‘mine’ materials that have always been mined and refined, which are faster, less energy-intensive, and responsible.”
The practice also keeps hazardous e-waste from being illegally handled or exported around the world. In Ontario, recycling facilities are regulated to protect the health and safety of workers — proper recycling creates e-waste jobs here in Ontario — and ensure that devices are recycled securely.
“The only thing that makes this work is if we all take a little bit of responsibility to keep the metals and other materials we use in circulation,” Nursall says. “We each have ownership of these things. They’re way too valuable to be thrown out.”