The Recycler - Three Rs

Rare metals and toxic WEEE
Another incentive to recover WEEE is the
quantity of precious metals it contains.
E-waste such as laptops, mobile phones and
monitors contain some of the Earths rarest
natural resources, Gold, Neodymium and
Indium. Although combined they account
for 0.00001% of this planets crust, they
play a critical role in the connectivity and
displays of devices.
Neodymium and indium are not only rare,
but they are only found in certain parts
of the world where the supply chains are
insecure. This makes their recovery from
waste more critical. Recovery is feasible,
but not straight forward. The ecological
A consequence is that consumers are extending
the lifetime of devices and, 60% are buying new
devices less frequently.
case for recovering Neodymium is clear;
when the material is obtained from a
recycling process the overhead on the
environment is a third less than if it were
mined from the earth.
Recovering Indium from disassembled
LCD screens is similarly worth the effort.
However, the quantities involved are
small both in devices and in the world.
Consequently, their monetary value is low
making the recovery process economically
questionable.
Shipping older devices from developed to
developing markets may be sustainably
problematic. From a reuse perspective,
the life of the product is extended but,
the environmental cost of transportation
needs to be considered. Further, at end of
life, disposal in some countries is as crude
as open burning of the waste.
A substantial proportion of WEEE is
plastic and the burning process releases
both useful energy and harmful gasses
to the atmosphere. Energy recovery and
emission treatment is essential to the
sustainability argument. It also makes
sense to keep devices with high content
in use and functioning rather than losing
these resources to bottom ash (residual
waste from the energy-from-waste
processes) or landfill forever.
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