One man’s waste is another’s gold. Or so Germany’s Norddeutsche Affinerie AG has discovered.
Germans throw away about 24 million mobile phones each year, almost one for every three residents, violating a federal law against electronic waste. Added up, it’s almost a half-ton of gold that can be melted out of the circuitry of discarded cellphones and computers.
That means the precious-metals refinery that Norddeutsche Affinerie operates in Germany, where Europe’s largest economy is suffering from its worst recession since World War II, is running at full speed forging gold bars out of the carcasses of German mobile phones and PCs.
“Electronic waste is a tremendous resource but it’s not being managed nearly as effectively as it could be,” Kevin Brigden, a scientist at Greenpeace in the UK, said in an interview. Phones and computers need to be designed so recyclers can easily extract the “pot of gold” in the waste, he said.
The Hamburg-based refiner, one of a handful of precious- metal recycling firms in the world, recovers about 3.5 tons of gold worth some $110 million each year from mobile phones and other electronic scrap. Similarly, Umicore SA near Antwerp, Belgium, recovers about 6 tons of gold a year from waste.
Their business prospects are helped by stepped-up recycling campaigns at Royal Philips Electronics NV, Europe’s largest television manufacturer, and Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest mobile-phone maker. Amsterdam-based Philips is investing ¤1 billion ($1.25 billion) until 2012 designing products to be recycled more easily that contain fewer chemicals and feature other “green” innovations.
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Nokia incentives, donations
Nokia tells customers how to discard phones at service centres and online. The Finland-based company also offers such incentives as free ring tones in China and donations to favourite charities in Europe to encourage recycling. Only one in six cellphones that Germans toss away get dropped off at recycling centres.
“It’s only a matter of time before customers become familiar with recycling,” Nokia spokeswoman Susan Smith said. With more gold from waste likely, that’s offering a growth opportunity for companies and investors even as the German economy contracts this year.
“There is an abundance of raw materials and the processing capacity is very tight,” said Michael Landau, management board member responsible for Norddeutsche Affinerie’s metal recycling operations. “The amount of raw material has risen over the past few years and we’re trying to take on more and add capacity.”
Umicore also said it is seeing a “steady increase” in the amount of electronic scrap for recovering precious metals.
Other companies that refine gold and precious metals from electronic waste include Xstrata Plc and Sweden’s Boliden AB. The process used by these refiners is “good” at recovering the metals without damaging the environment like it does in some developing countries, the Greenpeace group’s Brigden said.
Norddeutsche Affinerie, which is also Europe’s largest copper refiner, uses a three-stage electrolysis process that collects precious metals in a “dark sludge” of fine particles, Landau said. From there, the metal is made into bars of gold or powder for industrial processes.
A metric ton of electronic waste contains as much as 347 grams of gold, according to researcher Perrine Chancerel of Technische Universitaet Berlin. Almost all of which can be recovered if the waste is delivered to processing facilities instead of dumped in the trash.
Gold in trash?
Even with a law against electronic waste, Germans toss out 438 kilograms of gold with their old phones and computers every year along with 191 kilos of palladium, also used in catalytic converters, and it’s likely there’s more in landfills, she said.
“There’s enormous potential to recover these precious metals,” Chancerel said.
None of that matters if the junk isn’t collected and sorted properly, said Maria Elander, who investigates waste at the environmental organization Deutsche Umwelthilfe in Berlin. Electronic waste is growing three times faster than regular household garbage, according to the Environment Ministry.
Manufacturers failing to collect their used electronic equipment, poor enforcement of waste laws and consumers who don’t know what to do with used equipment are responsible for the rising volume of waste, she said. Recycling companies that fail to separate the electronic waste from other garbage or transport it safely face fines of as much as ¤50,000.
Fine for electronic waste
Germany passed a law in 2005 based on a European directive stipulating that electronic waste be recycled, not just thrown away. The law requires manufacturers to finance the collection and recycling of discarded electronic equipment.
Germans disposed of 750,000 tons of old electronic equipment in 2006, the most recent figures, of which 102,000 tons was phones, computers and printers. The success of battery disposals shows it’s possible to significantly increase the recycling rate of non-household garbage, Elander of the DUH said.
Gold, meanwhile, topped $1,000 an ounce on February 20 for the first time in 11 months.
Policy makers will need to spend more money designing a recycling system if they want to pollute less and recover more material, said Thierry Van Kerckhoven, Umicore’s global sales manager for electronic scrap. The Belgian company gets much of its scrap from outside its domestic market and expects more electronic waste in the coming years as regulations get stiffer.
Melting former electronic parts down and applying chemical processes to extract the metals, though, is not the only way to re-use gold. Norddeutsche Affinerie’s Landau showed off a circuit board made with gold that he keeps in his office.
“It’s like a work of art,” Landau said. “It’s almost a shame to melt it down. It looks fantastic.”