The UK Royal Mint has signed an agreement with Canadian clean tech start up Excir to introduce a world first technology to the UK, which will enable it to safely retrieve and recycle gold and other precious metals from electronic waste.
Excir’s patented technology, based on revolutionary chemistry, recovers 99%+ of gold from electronic waste, contained within the circuit boards of discarded laptops and mobile phones. The chemistry selectively targets and extracts precious metals from circuit boards in seconds – offering a new solution to the world’s fastest-growing waste stream.
Each year, more than 50 million tonnes of electronic waste is produced globally, equivalent in weight to 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2. If nothing is done, this is set to reach 74 million tonnes by 2030 – almost a doubling of tonnage in a decade.
Less than 20% of electronic waste is currently recycled world-wide. This means that gold, silver, copper, palladium, and other highly valued metals conservatively valued at $57 billion – a sum greater than the gross domestic product of most countries – are mostly discarded as opposed to being collected for treatment and reuse, the Royal Mint said.
Initial use of the technology at The Royal Mint has already produced gold with a purity of 999.9, and when fully scaled up, the process has potential to also recover palladium, silver and copper.
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