What can we get from e-waste recycling?
The data shows that in 2014, 41.8 million tons of electronic waste was produced globally, of which 6.5 million tons were safely processed. By 2017, global electronic waste is expected to exceed 60 million tons. The more electronic products you buy, the more electronic waste generated per year. This makes the serious fact that everyone has the responsibility to control the e-waste generated by purchasing more products.
What can we get from e-waste recycling?
E-waste contain many useful and even expensive materials, and in a complex electronic accessory, there are more than 60 elements of the periodic table. Take the waste computer and mobile phone as exaple!
The outer casing of the electronic waste contains metal such as aluminum and iron, and the circuit board, the wire and cable contain copper, and can be recycled after being refined. Of all the e-waste, the most valuable is the used computer.
According to reports, the amount of gold mining is limited, so the extraction of gold from electronic waste has become an important renewable resource production industry. In the used computer, the CPU and the memory stick contain gold components, and a used computer can generate 0.2 grams of gold. Based on this calculation, 10 gold recycled gold can make a gold ring. According to professionals, 300 grams of gold can be extracted per ton of used computers. According to the current market of second-hand gold, refining 1 gram of gold can earn 40 dollars, then 300g of gold extracted from a piece of electronic waste can earn 12,000 dollars!The total amount of gold extracted from used computers worldwide has exceeded the amount of gold extracted per year.This means we can get huge profits from e-waste recycling!
The computer update cycle is short. Taking Nanjing as an example, it can generate 2,000 waste computers every day. The precious metal recycling market has great potential. However, industry insiders said that the extraction of gold from used computers must undergo a professional extraction process, mainly through chemical extraction, while some informal channels are extracted by incineration and acid immersion, which is very harmful to the environment and leads to soil and groundwater pollution.
The hardware part of the mobile phone will release harmful substances in the decomposition, but by properly handling it, it can also turn waste into treasure like the waste computer.
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