How Scrappers Cash In On Gold From Your Old Computer | World Wide Waste | Business Insider 

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If we really want to reduce e-waste we need to force companies to start making products that are repairable again instead of designing them to be thrown out and replaced.

This takes "one man's trash is another man's treasure" to the next level.

In the Netherlands there's a big problem called 'weeelabex' This means if you own a business then it's illegal if you dismantle electronics, with the exception if you get a very expensive and regulated licence. So allot of people sell it illegally overseas.. Talk about environmental friendly.

They went to old mines to harvest specific types of bacteria to help with their extraction process. How cool!

Here's a rough idea/business plan for Mint: 1) Create a nonprofit arm focused on developing countries. 2) Open a new processing plant in Dehli, India. 3) Recruit and train the people currently working on electronic stripping into full, safety-regulated employment in the plant. (Unsure what the age labor laws are there, but there could also be a combination of school credit and money paid to kids working there.) 4) Repeat this process in other developing countries where we "outsource" electrical recycling. A plan like this can make a difference where "developed" have historically created problems by dumping such waste. Great video and cool companies!

I did this for years from 1999 to 2006, but most of them I repurposed into homes that couldn't afford them... It was a hobby, and a learning experience.

I am intrigued to know what happens to the 70% plastic that was shredded and turned into a pulp.

Old but literally gold.

As a newbie that wants to invest, you must have these three things in mind 1. Have a long term mindset. 2. Be willing to take risk. 3. Be careful on money usage, if you're not spending to earn back, then stop spending. 4. Never claim to know - Ask questions and it's best you work with a financial advisor.

That’s actually a really impressive facility Mint has there

I was in a high school program for kids who were getting into trouble a lot. Where we would have to tear apart old computers all day and sort the pieces into cardboard boxes I always wondered how much money they were making off us.

The parts are so rare today that their value to people who want old computers is greater than the melt price. The supply IS limited and you can not find old computers anymore, that have large amounts of Gold in them.

0:39 That computer is worth more as is than the gold extracted from it - about $280 for collectors

“..family nicknamed it flash because it’s red, it’s electric and it buzzes around everywhere” is absolutely gold.

People may call me cheap but I hold onto my electronics until I absolutely can't do anything with them. I take pride in being cheap and not wanting to produce more e-waste. Some time back, there was a 60 minutes story about children in China picking apart hazardous e-waste for just a few dollars a day. The water was undrinkable in their village due to massive amounts of chemicals. That really broke my heart to see that. We wouldn't want that for our kids or anyone else's kids or anyone for that matter. Be proud , be cheap and do your part to reduce waste.

That's awesome! Golden opportunity to turn waste into precious metals and these guys nail it!

Thank you to those people who help us recycling and thank you for doing such a nice informative video

This is absolutely beautiful. We need more work like this being done in the world.

Wade! That portable Compaq was what I flew my first helicopter sim on back in 91. That Compaq is what got me into computers. 11:20

That gold bar is more beautiful than any gold jewellery I've ever seen 🤩

The best e-waste comes from decommissioned army boats and submarines. There’s so much gold in the boards they use in the consoles. Also old school Pentium Pro CPUs are highly regarded and sought after for their gold content.

1:11 Ya, that Apple II is getting sold as vintage instead of getting processed.

Well done Wade and Mint. The useless governments in Australia should be providing financial backing to help acquire the equipment needed rather than wasting it like they love to do. The private sector leads the way…..again.

Great stuff. Crazy to dig it out of the ground when it's already concentrated in rubbish.

I'm one man, with one truck and a small garage. I live in a big city in western Canada where metal waste is in abundance. I also noted that it wasn't mentioned in the video is the aluminum that also accompanies circuit boards. We can't just keep taking from the earth.

Nearly twenty years ago I hauled what the paper work said were computers to the USA from Canada . Ended up on a rough road narrow as well. Not an industrial area at all . Found the place . It was a house with a new barn like building in which a small number of people sat at a bench and took the metals from the boards. I had thought it was new computers so I was going really slow on that old dirt road because I did not want damage. Anyway they guys opened the doors and it was just a huge pile of junk in my trailer. The guy told me it was very profitable

0:12 Jason from MBMMLLC!! Thats my neighbor!

We’re actually writing a book on this right now for the US market. Will definitely be reaching out to Wade.

Im really happy to see as much as possible getting recycled! As a "tech enthusiast" it does make me kind of sad to see some of these things destroyed, even if most of it is garbage to anybody else... I wonder what kind of collector's gold has has been shedded for its actual gold content!

Freakin fascinating! Just think if each city had a nice handful of these guys, from early on in the making of a city. So glad this electronic recycling is happening more often.

There was once a small jetti that shot off Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the site of the famous Naval battle. I was stationed there in 1981 - 1982. It was called the marine dump. Everything and anything the Naval command disregarded for whatever reason ended up in the marine dump. There were F4 phantom jets. Huge old computers. And things I couldn't identify. The place was off limits and I never gave it a thought. However, there was an older guy, I'll call him Beamer that knew far more than the rest of us. The isoand was going to close for awhile in 1982 and we were all being reassigned. Beamer decided we all needed to through a final farewell and have a great party. BBQ, drinks, beer, all the girls from the nursing school, the whole nine yards. After that party, which was only 5 days out from most of us leaving, Beamer invited me to his private room to have some farewell cocktails of some special stuff he was saving. While drinking that night, he showed me an huge electric smelter he had somehow bought and had flown to the island which he hidep in an old firehouse barracks. Hising such things wasn't hard on Midway. We also had a giant diesel generator capable of lighting up half the island which hw plugged the electric smelter into. Well, turns out ole Beamer was going to the marine dump several times a week a night digging put previous metals from all the old discarded equipment. He peeled off all the titanium from the F4 jets and made bard of it qhen titanium was so valuable it made gold look like tin foil. He smelted hundreds of pounds of gold, platinum and all sorts of other metals and had it all shipped to San Francisco. He had told me he had sold over 6.5 million dollars of the stuff in a 3 and a half year period. And this was 1982. The Navy considered it junk, but he still kept his mouth shut. This is the first time Ive told the story and I'm pretty sure Beamer is no longer with us. But it made me aware from back then all the computer stuff since 1981 was valuable. And I too took notice.

Huh. Neat to see Jason Gaber!

Wade is the man 👍

I'm happy to see that Wade attempts to repair and refurbish before sending things to scrap right away.

All depends on amount you can store, what you have access too process the waste and comes down to money for investing (its why it can work as a side hustle in some places but others not as the time isn't worth it) but long term having less e-waste an more recyclable will make the world a better place. Don't know where Wade does his stuff but rent alone in most places in sydney would outweigh what you could collect an turn over in most cases + if its run as a business or even side hustle he probably isn't actually follow worksafe requirements by the state of that storage space an what he does or paying taxes for the income which would take a chunk (which is why sometimes people who scrap or work for themselves actually cause issues with the systems in place because of declaring it etc)

This was such a feel good video. Super glad this sort of thing is growing in Aus and NZ.

i am also obsessed with vintage technology like cool these things were!!

7:30 something doesn’t add up here. They use bacteria AND fungi to get the gold? But the byproduct is toxic enough for them to not want people around it at all, and so the facility is mostly automated? How could any cellular organism dissolve gold, which is famously non-reactive, quicker than more economically viable than just using aqua regia?

If you are a mom - be sure that your child have access to your garage, it seems that everyone started from there for some reason xD It would be good to not become a mom before owning a garage too xD

this is the type of business I would love to be apart of! This is amazing.

So interesting .. lots of good information ....neat to see things taken care of the right way... 🙂👍 good video

The thing is as a consumer the government tacks an "e-waste fee" onto something we buy then we expect it will be handled with by the government in some way either by overseeing that ewaste collectors follow all regs and don't just dump the toxic byproducts in the sewer or whatever. But a lot of that recovery, yeah there's cheap which leaves toxic messes, and then there's refined which also has toxic byproducts. Although that bacterial and fungal bit is kind of cool, be interested to know more about it but of course the company is keeping that all under wraps.

I was not expecting to see Jason on this channel lol

As an indian i didn't knew this was happening in India This video showed the other side of the world to me Thank you for putting out this video

In Finland we have Kuusakoski oy that does this on a large scale. Big local electronic stores have to take in your E-waste and all of it gets reused or broken down to reusable raw materials. Even the plastic bits can be reused. 👍

Back in the 70s and sometimes in the 80s they were going through old gold mines and trying to leach the gold out of the tailings left after the easy to extract gold was removed. They were selling stock in the process, and they made a lot of money suckering people to by the stock, and none of the mines ever produced any gold worth the money spent on the stocks!

What a great idea. People like wade and mint are crucial

It's so great this report has come to us people. Personally I've saved all my phones I've purchased over the last 15 years lol. All 3 of them, I can't manage to throw away any laptops either I've owned, all 2 of them. It seems like such a huge waste to throw away like trash. I did bring one large TV to the recycling place though after I couldn't fix it myself. I have 2 others that are stored in my garage, also unfixable. People really need to pay attention to their electronics waste and like another poster said, hold companies accountable but it really starts with us.

That's brilliant and beautiful to see that they're taking care of their own e-waste and earning money with it

This is such a beautiful process, and I'm genuinely impressed. Your work has the potential to make history and shape the future. Keep pushing boundaries, making a positive impact, and inspiring others to join the journey. I genuinely hope more people contribute to your mission. Let's envision a future where your efforts continue to clean up more waste, and we can all lend a helping hand. You're crafting a legacy. Keep changing the game and rewriting the future!

Hurts me in the feels, seeing an old Osborne having to be broken down…

It's always fun to find capacitors that still have a charge. Makes your heart tickle 😅

This is what I do, only not as advanced as Wade's setup we don't break things down in the warehouse into materials, we basically refurbish ewaste if someone wants to buy it, if not we break it down into parts eg circuit boards with gold plating and sort those to send off, I have gloves and we have a hydraulic press to separate metals (although I never used it) I'm from England and I genuinely love this job, I work with a few people it's like a small team and this isn't my real job, only my work experience but I genuinely love it and I hope I can do this as a career I am actually treated well and respected in my work and it's just a great energy from everyone even my boss is so damn nice and chill and I reach my qoutas well

You had a brief bit in this with a supplier of Crushers can do this cheaper than you suggest in your video.

It feels almost dystopian seeing people rummage through piles of discarded computer parts rather than extracting precious metals from the ground

Wade we love people like you!

It's showing crt TVs and electronics which no longer exists. There are plenty of videos on RU-vid showing how hard is to extract few grams of gold (if you happen to find a tons of 20 years old electronics cards or chips that happen to have golden plated contacts). Eventually the news here is that there's now a company which has apparently found an environmental friendly way to extract minerals with the help of special kind of bacteria

10:35 - Macintosh Plus!

Business Insider needs to make more sense. How can one ton of motherboards contain more gold than one ton of mined gold? I'm pretty sure they mean gold ore.

Starting to believe algorithm reads minds, I was thinking about this the other day and now i get it recommended.

Maybe back in the 90s it was lucrative for the individual in his garage. Nowadays you have to do it on an industrial scale to make any real money from it.

"mutant bacteria can now recover gold from electronics" Should have been the thumbnail

4:28 "Jacob"? For shame. At least the voicever and the closed captions are correct.

This is awesome! Hopefully we can reduce e-waste and force companies to take initiative on making sustainable technology.

8:42 They use electroplating to extract the copper from the "computer" electrolyte they made. Awesome.

I brought some electronics to a big electronics shop in Japan and they tried to charge me for them to recycle it. WTF? THAT's why people don't recycle e-waste.

the "secret stuff" is aqua regia, you drop gold in it desolves, then when you feel you have collected enough liquid gold, you throw tin powder in, the gold will harden and sink to the bottom

Ernie! Thank you for your service.

THANK YOU. My heart is soothed watching this video :)

The new gold rush! If we can see this waste as the valuable asset it really is!!

Aus 9% is slightly less at USA15%. That's a huge increase. Double almost . 3:02

Well done inspiring value based dumpster diving to keep electronics out of landfills. Wade might open an official museum of working computers allowing many to access worldwide to transfer or upgrade antiquated data to newer platforms as a side hustle.

5:14 OMG look at the river

Exporting ewaste is not a eco friendly option when it's burned for metals.

Is gold really worth it to buy ? In terms of the short term considering taxes and overall cost of upfront purchase then trying to resell when I actually need the liquidity, is physical or gold stocks more worth the cost ? Because it seems to be when people speak of gold their not being specific to the short term or Long term approach to justifying the purchase. Let me know your thoughts , thanks anyone

I was thinking that E-Waste Ben would make a guest appearance, but I do occasionally watch Shark Scrapper, so that’s cool.

Thank you for doing this ❤ you're a pioneer in the truest sense ❤

So why is the special formula a secret? Share it with the rest of the world, so everyone can have a go at making it financially feasible.

Thats pretty cool! However, gold was phased out 10yrs ago in Semiconductormanufacturing so the recycling efficiency will be less and less economical in the coming years.

I used to work for a place in Texas called "Round 2"that did all this stuff...

Just wow 😳 amazing work and one smart Business Idea 👏 excellent

1 ton of circuitboard waste from computers and cellphones contains: ~300 grams of gold ~1,5 kilos of silver - Lots of copper, tin etc. - Smaller mount of palladium, tallium etc. Imagine this: Its profitable to start a gold mine when theres a few grams of gold per ton of soil/ore...

Oh shit! Is that the Jason (from Mount Baker Mining and Metals)?

Watching this video really gives me hope for a more sustainable future. I'm rooting for Wade Cawley and his team at Mint Innovation to succeed in their mission to recover precious metals from electronics. It's amazing to think about the potential of turning e-waste into valuable resources. Plus, as someone who loves collecting vintage items, it's fascinating to see the intersection of technology and history in this process.

That thumnail is quite misleading. $85,000 per day after gathering 100tons of electrical parts and millions in equipment to extract the gold.

Yooooo I just randomly came across this video, my dad does this as a hobby, he showed me this giant ball of gold he had, it was like a one inch ball of solid gold, I remember being a kid and our family room looked like a meth lab with beakers of sulphuric acid, and green and blue crap, my sister once spilled some on her hand and she was like crying and freaking out and I remember being scared of the fumes because it was right by our computer, we also had piles of computers and sharp circuit boards filling our family room, my sister stubbed her toe once on a stack of circuit boards, I remember my dad had a giant box of old busted flip phones and stuff, let's just say living in a house with a dad who did this as a hobby was really a thing to experience

Nitric Acid and Potassium Nitrate?!!?😆 Thats Tom Wizardry !

We have a recycling company that pays us less than their facility 2 states over (4 hours away) pays there for the same materials. They accept computer circuit boards and electronics but they don't pay for them. I never see them get any of that. My fiancé & I dumpster dive the same city, but only occasionally as we moved to about 90 miles away. Even when we lived there though, and had many spots we'd check consistently (business dumpsters mainly) there was no way to save even a significant fraction of the massive amount of electronic waste that gets thrown away. And this is a city in Montana with a population of less than 30,000. It's disgusting what gets wasted every single freaking day.

I subscribe to this guy's videos and I love the work he is doing. E-waste is literally throwing away your best and rarest minerals en mass.

You've great at recycling old things.

Very cool, Wade! And Mint as well. Good on you

Problem is... the amount of accessible valuables in modern e-waste has become so small, that this business model is going to break down soon. Microwave transformers are wound with aluminium wire, instead of copper. Modern MLCCs (formerly containing palladium) are now 99% worthless. Flip chip IC designs don't contain any gold bond wires. Remaining gold plating is just a nanometer gold flashing.... dozens of examples available. Today there is still enough old stuff being thrown away. But it will end soon.

Hi you have an outlet in Perth Australia?

I'm so happy to see he's not scrapping the retro/collectable stuff!

Ah yes I always send my scrap computer stuff to boardsort best payouts and the dude is honest

Really nice mentality and beautifull project Whish you the best

Amazing seeing people in India squatting on British empire railroads beating electronics with a rock

2:35 The little black chips are like >95% silicon.

I would hope that the news pick up some of your stories. Sparking innovation for the better! Thank you