The push to secure more copper, lithium and other critical minerals needed for energy and technology has renewed the focus on recycling e-waste as a source of these minerals. Unfortunately, recovering minerals from e-waste is an expensive and difficult process, experts are finding.
The volume of e-waste is growing at the same that our need for critical minerals is increasing. E-waste refers to any electronic device that is headed toward the waste stream. That category used to be primarily old computers, but now includes obsolete phones, tablets, watches and other wearable devices. These devices are made of a variety of precious metals including copper, gold, silver, palladium and lithium, among others.
Many of the same valuable minerals are needed to build clean energy infrastructure and electric vehicles. They also needed to fuel data centers that increasingly support artificial intelligence. The demand for critical minerals has sharpened the focus on China which supplies the bulk of our mineral needs and has increased attention on meeting the demand with a supply in the U.S.
According to an article in The Wall Street Journal this month, “the push to recycle metals in the U.S. comes amid intensifying efforts to compete with China, which dominates the critical mineral market.”
Complications of Recycling E-Waste
Collection: Unlike paper, plastic, glass and metal, there are few places that provide a regular means to dispose of e-waste so that it can be recycled. According to the Journal article “collecting electronic waste can be tricky because there isn’t a strong infrastructure to retrieve devices directly from homes, scrapyards, manufacturers or collection sites.” The article points out that some consumers are hesitant to hand over electronic devices over privacy concerns about personal information that might still be on old devices. Some municipalities will schedule special collections for e-waste, and some have bins at recycling collection points, but this varies widely from place to place.
Recovery: Despite the fact that valuable metals and minerals are in e-waste, they are usually in very minute amounts. This means that the time and effort expended to recycle e-waste will usually not provide much profit. As e-waste recycling methods technologically advance and the value of these minerals increases, the economics of e-waste recycling will improve, making recycling more cost effective, according to experts.
In addition to supplying our own demand for critical minerals, here are other reasons why recycling e-waste is important:
- It is critical to keep electronic waste out of landfills. Electronic devices are comprised of toxic substances and heavy metals. Materials such as chromium, cadmium, mercury and lead can leach out of a device and into the soil if improperly disposed of in a landfill, contaminating the air and waterways according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Recycling this material not only keeps toxic substances out of landfills, but it also saves landfill space. The EPA estimates that there are about 60 million tons of e-waste globally per year. For these reasons, there are numerous state laws that now ban e-waste in landfills.
- Electronic products are nearly 100 percent recyclable. As an illustration, according to the EPA, if one million cell phones were recycled, it would yield:
- 35,274 pounds of copper
- 772 pounds of silver
- 75 pounds of gold
- 33 pounds of palladium
- Reclaiming valuable materials from recycling means there will be decreased demand for new raw materials. This helps conserve natural resources that would otherwise have to be mined or newly manufactured, which requires significantly more energy to produce.
- Discarded electronic devices can also be kept out of landfills if they are refurbished, reused and donated to a worthy cause. A quick Google search will provide a list of organizations in most areas that rebuild old electronics and provide them to those who would otherwise go without. “Reuse” is an important component of keeping material out of the waste stream.
- If electronic devices end up in scrapyards, they are dangerous because crushing or shredding lithium-ion batteries causes scrapyard fires.
E-waste may make its way into scrapyards, mixed in with cars, old appliances and industrial scrap handled by the scrap metal recycling industry. Individual recyclers have different approaches for how to handle these items, but more progress is being made on how to extract valuable material and move these items through the recycling process. ScrapWare Corp., of Rockville, Maryland, provides and services software supporting the scrap metal recycling industry and has observed the industry increasingly deal with electronics as part of the waste stream.
About ScrapWare Corporation: Since 1989, Rockville, Maryland-based ScrapWare Corporation has been the software of choice for the recycling industry. Its ease of installation and simplicity saves users time and money while helping them achieve compliance and maintain accurate business insights. With state-of-the-art functionality tailored to each organization’s unique requirements, ScrapWare is an advanced dynamic software solution that alleviates the most pressing recycling industry worries. For more information, please call (301) 517-8500 or visit https://www.scrapware.com/.