We throw away a lot of our household electronic devices such as TVs, mobile phones, microwaves, games consoles. This is known as electronic waste or ‘E-waste’. The UK produces over 6 million tons of E-waste per year and all this waste contains valuable materials including precious metals. Only around 31% of this waste is currently recycled, with most of it being sent overseas and ending up in landfill.
The Royal Mint uses a lot of gold and silver in products such as commemorative coins and jewellery. The process of mining gold from the ground is very damaging to the environment so the Royal Mint is keen to find other ways to source its precious metals.
Gold is a really good conductor of electricity and is used on circuit boards found inside all electronic devices. So if you throw away your old mobile phones, laptops, TVs, and even old toasters, you're throwing away gold with them.
The Royal Mint has helped to develop a new process of recycling precious metals from electronic waste. The circuit boards are broken down and stripped of all their components so the different materials can be separated out. The Mint keeps the gold, which is stripped off the boards using a chemical process done at room temperature, meaning it uses less energy than more traditional methods of recycling that usually involve heating materials up to melt and separate them.
Another positive from this process is that recycling more electronic waste at the Royal Mint means less energy being used to transport waste abroad for processing or going into landfill.
https://www.royalmint.com/gold-recovery/
We know you can’t recycle precious metals at home or school, but there's lots of things you can do to help reduce waste. Follow this link for recycling tips