## There's gold left in them thar e-scrap
_By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling_
Less than 15 percent of the gold and silver contained in post-consumer electronics is recovered for recycling and is instead being discarded. That was the message experts had for participants from 12 countries at the e-Waste Academy for policymakers and small businesses.
Held in Accra, Ghana by the United Nations University and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, the academy is meant to share existing knowledge and research into the effective management of discarded electronics.
According to some presenting at the 2012 academy, 320 tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver, collectively worth more than $21 billion, are annually used to make PCs, cell phones, tablets computers and other new electronic devices. Additionally, electronic waste now contains precious metal "deposits" 40 to 50 times richer than ores mined from the ground, according to the experts.
According to other research from presenters, developing countries with an active informal recycling sector collect as much as 80 to 90 percent of their locally-generated e-waste. However, some 50 percent of the gold in e-scrap is lost in crude dismantling processes in developing countries (compared with 25 percent in developed countries).
"Rather than looking at e-waste as a burden, we need to see it as an opportunity," Alexis Vandendaelen of Belgium-based Umicore Precious Metals Refining told the participants.
He recommended replacing notions of "waste management" with "resource management" in order to enlarge the focus from mass and volume of used materials to include the quality of certain waste fractions.
Chris Slijkhuis of MBA Polymers, a global firm specializing in the recycling of plastics, also noted that the plastics recovered from e-scrap could significantly reduce energy and oil consumption.
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URL: http://resource-recycling.com/node/2939
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