Britain to get first commercial refinery for extracting precious metals from e-waste
22nd August 2020 | Recycling
The UK is to get its first commercial refinery for extracting precious metals from electronic waste, which will also be the world’s first to use bacteria rather than cyanide-based processes. A New Zealand startup, Mint Innovation, plans to open the facility within 12 months in Cheshire, in the north of England, after delays caused by the Covid-19 crisis.
The UK’s impending exit from the EU has provided an urgent economic need for such a facility – a UN report last month found at least $10bn (£7.bn) of gold, platinum and other precious metals were dumped every year in a growing mountain o e-waste. When the Commons environmental audit committee launched its inquiry into e-waste and the circular economy last year, its then chair, Mary Creagh, criticised the UK’s “unsustainable” approach to e-waste and called for radical action.
E-waste
The UK produced more e-waste than the EU average and was “one of the worst offenders for exporting e-waste to developing countries ill-equipped to dispose of it in socially and environmentally responsible way,” she said.
Recyclers in the UK have to send printed circuit boards to mainland Europe to have the precious metals they contain extracted. After Brexit, the costs of doing this are expected to rise.
Rhys Charles, a researcher at Swansea University’s College of Engineering, said, “If we have to pay import and export duties to access processes it could be detrimental to recycling at a time when it is becoming more strategically important to build out own circular economy.” Mint was set up in 2016 to develop a bio-refinery that combines hydrometallurgy and biotechnology to safely extract metals – including gold, palladium, silver and copper – from e-waste.
Ollie Crush, the company’s chief scientific officer, says the key features of its refineries are that they are low-cost, green and local to where the waste is being created. “The plants are very agricultural, more like a small microbrewery. The regulatory tailwind is for western nations to handle their own waste stream. We off the same yield as the big smelters, the same level of service and quicker,” he said. “But unlike the smelters, we do not use cyanide and we use less energy, less CO2, less water, less waste. A refinery can be popped into any nation, region or city.”
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