The Precious in E-Waste: $2.5 Billion worth Gold and Silver Used in Phones this Year
Technology has become an intrinsic part of our lives, not a day goes by when a gadget is not devised to improve our lives somewhat. So what happens to all the e-equipment that becomes redundant the day it is released? Experts say that dealing with e-waste may soon become a pressing environmental problem.
Each phone contains 40 chemical elements, including 300 mg of silver, 30 mg of gold and many hazardous elements such as lead and mercury . Most of these elements end up as e waste in landfills as the cost of recycling these elements is prohibitive.
This study was done by Hywel Jones, a materials scientist at England's Sheffield Hallam university who says that just the gold and silver used to manufacture the phones sold this year are worth more than $2.5 billion.
Around1.8 billion new cell phones will be bought in 2014 and 44 percent of them will end up "hibernating" in drawers. Four percent will end up in landfills and only 3percent will be recycled, says the report in Chemical and Engineering News.
There are more rare metals in landfills than in known global reserves, claims the report.
There is an urgent need for engineers, designers, chemists and market forces to come together to build viable modular phones which carry major replaceable parts rather than the use and throw technology that is being promoted at the moment.
David Peck, a professor of industrial design engineering in Netherlands say, "Real opportunities to solve the problem will lie in cooperation among chemists, engineers, designers, and the business community."
Some suggestions include a motherboard that dissolves making the precious material easily recoverable. Researchers are experimenting in developing cellulosic materials for the phone's skeleton and circuit boards, which can be dissolved to sugar by enzymes. Electroplating to dissolve and recover the metals used in phones is being considered too.
Some major companies like Google have forayed into developing viable solutions and are investing in building solutions.
