10 07 29 Master thesis Juliana Leon - e-Waste. This guide

Colombian Pesos (COP) per kg while big metal traders (only one to three by city) buy
at higher prices, but only sorted material and in large quantities. Metal traders,
classify PWBs into three categories as shown in Table 12.
Table 12: Classification, possible origins and buying price of PWBs according to CI Metal
Comercio functioning as intermediary between chatarrerías in Bucaramanga and CI
Recycables (Cartagena). The metal trader doesn’t accept type 4 PWBs like the ones in
monitors.
Type 1 Type 2 Type 3
With golden components:
Mobile phones, HDD PWB,
video cards, chips
With many valuable
components:
Old servers and CPUs
With some valuable
components:
New and old computers
6,000 COP/kg 5,000 COP/kg 1,000 COP/kg
Low-grade PWBs, such as the ones found in monitors are accepted by the formal
treatment companies but without paying for them. Nevertheless, the upstream
stakeholders such as big metal traders, chatarrerías and recicladores do not have
any interest in collecting low-grade PWBs.
3.3.4 Informal metal extraction
Informal metal extraction includes precious metal extraction from PWBs using acid
baths or others artisanal methods, as well as wires burning for copper recuperation.
According to Colombian and Swiss experts, leaching of gold from PWBs in Colombia
is not as important as in other developing countries such as India or China, and
seems to remain a sporadic practice, at least for the moment. This can be explained
by the fact that one of the biggest formal e-waste recycling companies (CI
Recycables) is receiving large quantities of PWBs from the informal sector by a
network of intermediaries and partnerships with the biggest metal traders of each
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