Recycling electronic wastes: More gold than in industrial mining operations?
Posted on: July 18, 2012
Recycling electronic wastes: More gold than in industrial mining operations?
The town is Hoboken, close to the main city of Anvers in Belgium. A recycling center for portable electronic left-overs that process 350,000 tons per year. The results:
1. Every recycled ton generates: 600 grams of gold, compared to only 5 grams from soil excavation…
2. More than 100 tons of gold were extracted, 2,400 tons of silver, 25 tons of platinum, 30,000 tons of copper…and zink, rhodium, palladium, aluminum…
3. All in all, over 60 kinds of necessary minerals were extracted that can be readily be reused in the electronic industry at less energy consumption…
4. Batteries are being recycled…
5. The cycle is closed: what cannot be processed are dumped in cement concrete products…
6. CO2 generation of the recycling procedures is 80% less than in mineral extraction sites…
Germany is the world leader in recycling products that contain copper.
And Chili is the world producer of raw copper mineral that Germany process and re-export.
All the towns around the excavation sites in Chili have been vacated after the polluted air, rich in arsenic, killed the living ones decades ago…
Only the graves of the 15 thousands who died remain…
Note: One of the main reasons late President of Chili Salvador Allende was ousted by the military and executed was because he initiated the nationalization of copper extraction and wanted to process the raw material in Chili
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