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With the rising price of gold and many efforts to protect the Earth's resources, mining this precious metal from electronic waste is becoming a trend in Japan and many other countries. This is considered a promising market as the amount of global electronic waste is increasing.
Gold from the cradle of electronics
Japan has few natural resources to mine, so the extraction of gold and other precious metals from discarded electronics is a priority. A plant in Hiratsuka City, near Yokohama, receives circuit boards and jewelry every day, then melts the scrap for gold and other metals, which are then shaped into ingots and other forms. About 3,000 tons of materials are recovered annually at the facility. According to Nikkei Asia, the head of the facility, Akio Nagaoka, plans to expand waste collection to ASEAN, where e-waste is expected to increase.
Gold mining from electronic waste has become more popular as gold prices have recently skyrocketed, a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts. As prices rise, so does the demand for metal recycling. According to the World Gold Council (WGC), global recycled gold supply from January to September 2023 increased by about 10% compared to the same period in 2022 (to 923.7 tons), exceeding the growth of about 3% in gold supply from mining. The recycled gold supply for the whole of 2023 is expected to reach nearly 1,300 tons, the highest in the past 10 years.
Recycled gold currently accounts for less than 30% of global supply, or about 200,000 tonnes of gold, according to the WGC. With mine output stagnant, recovering the yellow metal from old smartphones, appliances and other scrap is more important than ever. Some companies are expanding their capacity to collect and process such waste to meet growing demand. One is Mitsubishi Materials, which aims to process 240,000 tonnes of e-waste annually by the end of fiscal 2030, up from about 160,000 tonnes now. The Institute of Sustainable Design, Japan, estimates that about 5,300 tonnes of gold are accumulated in e-waste in Japan - about 10% of global reserves.
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| Gold obtained from electronic waste Photo: NIKKEI ASIA |
According to Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, one ton of electronic waste, or about 10,000 mobile phones, can yield about 280 grams of gold, which is 56 times more efficient by weight than mining new gold. The Japanese government is pushing to recycle not only gold but also other critical metals, such as those used in electric vehicles, as a way to boost economic security.
Europe does not want to be left behind
According to Professor Ruediger Kuehr, University of Limerick (Ireland), head of the United Nations Sustainability Programme (Scycle) in Germany, 1 ton of discarded mobile phones contains more gold than 1 ton of ore in a gold mine. The demand for electronic devices is outstripping the natural resources available to produce them. In Huelva (Spain), the international mining company Atlantic Copper is building the world's 7th largest plant (4th in the European Union - EU and 1st in Southern Europe) to extract gold and other precious metals from electronic waste. The investment has been committed to 310 million EUR (337 million USD), creating 350 jobs.
Demand for metals and minerals will increase 12-fold over the next 25 years, says researcher Pablo Gámez Cersosimo in the Netherlands. Extracting materials such as gold, silver, platinum, palladium, nickel, tin, antimony or bismuth from the earth is costly and harmful to the environment. If we don’t recycle these materials, we need to find new sources, which is harmful to the environment. These materials are mostly found in landfills, made up of the more than 60 million tons of electrical and electronic waste the world produces each year.
According to the Global E-waste Monitor, in just seven years, there will be 74 million tons of e-waste generated globally each year due to increased consumption, shortened useful lives of devices, and limitations associated with repairs. However, anything with a cord, plug, or battery can be recycled.
Mr. Kees Baldé, from the United Nations University, said that recovering gold and other materials from waste saves a lot of CO2 emissions compared to mining pure metals. The presence of gold and silver in electronic waste is the most prominent. Copper is also a notable metal. The demand for copper has increased by 50% in the past 20 years. However, the number of large-capacity copper recovery facilities is small, with factories located only in Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Japan and South Korea. Although slow, with the factory under construction in Huelva, with a capacity to process 60,000 tons of waste/year, Spain can process all of the country's electrical and electronic waste. It is expected that in the first quarter of 2025, the factory will start producing products.
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