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@@hungryjack8032 They don't break. They get bottle necked by software updates. The same people who push climate change are the ones slowing down your phone so you buy a new one every year or two.
@@Tyshkevich Yes they get clogged with unnecessary "improvements". Things like Buttons wear out and glass cracks and batteries die. Either way they force you to spend cash.
No one ever talks about the companies where their whole business model is convincing someone their status as a person requires them to buy a new $1k+ phone every year. What happened to electronics that worked for a decade? It's criminal.
Yep, materialism is the new Religion. Me personally, i think its insane spending that much on a phone. I buy a $100 android use it for a few years until it breaks
@@Golfr2020 Mining from finished components is wasteful. Electronics usually fails because of one or a few components, meaning most are fine. Direct recycling versus destructive recycling. Right to Repair is more akin to direct recycling and upcycling. In its implementation, it is also more profitable.
mostly a thin micron thk. layer is plated on contacts. there are other metals that don't corrode like chromium and nickle but they are harder to plate and have less electrical conductivity.
The story is sad, but the ending doesn't have to be. As the company just showed, there were already natural lifeforms which could help with part of the problem. I'm in biochemistry, and a lot of the times you need to mess with bacteria to create one that does something particularly useful - having the microbes already exist saves a lot of work.
@@perrytran9504 That's true, but I agree with the gentleman saying we need to solve this problem at the source. They should be held accountable. Here in the Netherlands when you buy a new electronical product you have to pay a recycling fee. (I'm not sure if they really use it to recycle the old product though) So the user is already held accountable for the geetting a new product.
Apple remote killed my 1st gen iPad. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the device, nothing to fix. They just won't support it. So I got rid of them years ago.
Agreed. I’m a low volt tech and the first company I worked for had a strict no scrap rule. Throw the scrap from your installs in the dumpster because they didn’t want their employees searching for scrap on company time. To hell with that, so wasteful.
I never knew Bitcoin trade could be this challenging! Kept running back to these RU-vid videos to learn more about these, this your RU-vid video is really indeed helpful. Thanks
me and my 5 yr old phone and my 10 yr old laptop: "I guess people likes trendy and up-to-date, unlike me" I'm satisfies for what I have and I enjoy repairs.
This is really a game changer in E-waste problem. They should share this technology with counties like india. We have facing this problem so badly. Thanks to business insider for showing these kind of information
@@fredrikalfson1541 the problem is profitability. If you can't make money doing it, no one is going to do it unless the tax payers are willing to fund it.
@@c.j.1089 By the time recycling becomes cheaper than mining, it will be too late. At best right now, artificially speeding up the viability of recycling by taxing mined raw materials and use that to subsidize recycling research. The cost will of course fall to the end product customer but it would also give more value to old electronics making it worth piling up to sell later on.
@@knightburst6127 just like this video explains as well. We invent and produce products, it becomes a problem, and becomes far too late on a solution to reverse the effects it has. Why not have a solution before its development? Hope these were a better explanation.
Generally, the benefits outweigh the negatives. Would you rather not use computers at all to avoid having e-waste? Would you rather never drive a car, truck, boat etc to avoid releasing emissions? Compromises have to be made somewhere.
@@MaplePanda04 everything invented and produced will always have consequences. It's not about not having them. Why should it be so difficult to have a plan before the mass production in order for us to be able to reverse the effects it would eventually cause in the near future? Solar panels, electric car batteries, computer chips/ circuitboards, automobiles, the list goes on.. We are so quick to invent, mass produce, and profit from these products, that we have absolutely no plan ahead to reverse some of or all of the effects it will cause. Than it becomes a problem such as in these videos.
AMD😏...seriously though I have a ryzen 3-2200U and it's a piece of garbage and can't run anything except Minecraft, if they stopped wasting resources time and money and just made actually good devices that would probably make a difference
that would mean that very many people who do scrapping to eek out a bare minimum living to feed their family would be out of business. Is that really what you want?
This has been happening for years now. I part owned a company that recycled gold from computers, and it was hard getting good boards and ram 10 years ago. All modern boards have little to no gold in them.
That's normal. New tech is made in "economy" with less ores (or made with new materials) in order to reduce waste but mainly to reduce production costs. Like everything else today. But that's also why old stuff usually last longer contrariwise the new that it's more susceptible to tear and break because of the bad design. You can see the same differences in the construction world... Todays buildings even if made in reinforced concrete don't last even 100 years before showing structural damages... And yet ancient roman buildings are still standing from centuries after seeing wars, eartquakes etc... requiring low maintenance. That's because modern portland concrete doesn't have the same percentage of pozzolan and other stuff in the mixture...
@Tom Kelly It looks the part. The issue with smaller companies was that they never disposed of the chemicals properly that were used to break the gold down. It was really popular years back, so all of the big chips got snapped up. Very little these days has any gold in. The Chinese made boards that looked like gold, but weren't. Many lost money buying them.
@@tomkelly8827 it's a test of concept, likely running on investor and government grant monies. A plant using harsh chemicals can be closed loop. Doesn't matter if it's harsh, but never escapes the plant.
E-waste is a problem and so are the gadgets which are made to break after the warranty ends. It's amazing how the companies making these gadgets have no accountability for the e-waste their products produce.
@@LeSeulGarcon great question. I did some research and their technology extracts not only gold but also other metals such as tin, copper, silver, iron etc. Plastic and fiberglass, used for the base of motherboard, hasn't been mentioned in the process so maybe that it disposed through other means. In conclusion, it's much better method than what was shown in e-waste dump site.
This video makes me wish I listened during chemistry lessons 🤔
3 года назад
The good thing about XXI century is that you can learn nearly anything online. I recommend CrashCourse RU-vid channel. There are Chemistry courses. After that, there are no limits.
That’s cool how they get the precious metals, but what happens to the rest of the substance where they recovered the precious metal from? Where does that waste end up ?
It's mostly fiberglass and plastic housing for integrated circuit components at that point, I think. Remaining stuff are probably treated like plastic waste. The bright side is that they've grounded the entire thing down to sand like consistency so you can probably pack away alot more waste per volume.
@@krillnyetheshrimpguy6152 They could (and might do that) compact that to pellets and use it as a carbon sink by just fill old mines up with that so the trapped carbon gets permanantly extracted from the carbon cycle. If that is the case this process could even be carbonnegativ (meaning it reduces the amount of CO2 in the system by peramntly extracting it)
Have had my iPhone 7 ever since it was released and it’s working *amazingly* fine. I see absolutely no reason to buy a new phone if my current one is working sufficiently
The guy at the end is 100% correct. Make corporations responsible for the end of life of their products and packaging. If that were the case, packaging would be biodegradable over night and products would have a sensible means of disposal
That would be disastrous, we don't need to do anything like that, the way we solve this problem is, as a people, demand this from companies, that way the solution would come naturally and stick.
Micro-organisms that only absorbs precious metal...learning something everyday with RU-vid. And doing my 3rd year in chemical engineering this is useful one day for sure.
Love learning about this new process to avoid air pollution by using microbes and technology versus others burning the computers causing a toxic environment. Keep up the great work and innovation!
I totally agree, I hope it really takes off. I'm scared for the future of everyone. Those people who are burning that toxic stuff, they are in very difficult situations, and very poor in their countries. Places like the US pay to have their waste dumped there, and then people living in those places risk their lives to earn a living. If they truly had a choice, they wouldn't be doing that to make a living. They're also victims of e-waste in the grand scheme of things. I hope I live one day to see the world get better for everyone.
Are you Serious ? People get NEW phones every 2 yrs. Lithium Car Batteries will NEVER be Recyclable... too much Time / Space & MONEY - This is What is Destroying & Depleting the Earth @ Astronomical Rate - Just to Extract , Produce Lithium Is the DIRTIEST , Most Toxic for the WATER & Where they dump the large amounts of TOXIC WASTE Biggest LIE of the Century Lithium , Lion is Clean Energy. Its 10× more Dirty than Oil & Refinery -
Extracting the Gold and Palladium on its own is probably not financially viable however when you consider the extraction of the copper, tin etc and the cost and environmental damage of current processes it might just be viable. There would still be enormous amounts of waste in the process but at least that waste would be a little less harmful to the environment. The better solution would be putting an end to forced obsolescence and having manufacturers produce products that last longer, are easily repairable by third parties and that when they do eventually reach end of life are readily recyclable.
It will be hard to tell companies to make a product that will last twice as long as they do now, because that will mean less sales of the product, meaning yearly revenue will decrease, meaning stock holders and investors will dump stock shares when dividends fall below inflation. In a world that depends on a Capitalistic economy, inflationary spiral is the ultimate outcome. An employee in a union demands more pay, the company awards more pay and increases the cost of the company's product to compensate. Now the product costs more and people complain about the high cost of goods. And when do you think this upward spiral will stop and reverse. Never !!!! and you will eventually have a two level country, those who can afford, and those who can not, and those who can not afford will turn to crime to solve their money problems.
@@Alex-kp3hr I'll tackle what you said in reverse order. We unfortunately already have a world of the haves and the have nots. Any real pretense of the majority of the population in most countries being middle class went out the door decades ago. If you wish to see what happens when countries legislate against forced obsolescence check out some of the legislation that's been active in the EU for some years now. All in all its usually more long term cost effective to get a better quality product that is not designed to break after a year or 2. As for companies, they either learn to adapt or stop doing business in that market, I can tell you which option hurts their yearly profits more.
Isn't there is a simpler way to reduce the e-waste . Usually people dump the electrical gadgets after they stop working , eg. Like tv remote. If manufacturers start paying some bucks to the people if they returned non functional electrical gadgets then people won't throw them away . Atleast proportion will reduce and company can also recycle them however possible
im so interested to learn about this, what should i study? i think biotechnology would be the future of waste processing, but im kinda lost on where to begin
Biotechnology, sustainable material development and sustainable engineering are gonna be the way for future. My suggestion is go wide ,collect knowledge then specialize
Building off what shyam said, from my experience biochemistry is a good starting point to branch off. You can pivot into the physical sciences side with pure chemistry, materials sciences, chem engineering etc., or into the life sciences side with molecular biology, bioengineering, staying in biochemistry etc. The nice thing is stuff doesn't specialize until a while into your college education, so you have some time to decide which aspects fascinate you the most, or sometimes which ones it turns out you don't like. Remember - there are many sides to these complex problems, so there are many fields which work together to add their own knowledge in designing solutions. Even those outside science and engineering (e.g. in law or business) can help by making solutions profitable enough to be worth pursuing: you can invent a magic pill that adds 10 years to anyone's life, but if it's too expensive or hard to get, people won't use it and it may as well not exist.
The problem is having throw away products and fashion. When mega cell phone companies make a new phone every year, what is the incentive to make a product for long term?
Making new phone each year dosent mean that people buy new phone each year(Maybe except a few percent crazy indviduals). Most people especialy now keep their phone for at least 2 to 3(or even longer) years and even then i doubt they Will throw away a perfectly working phone. They Will Just give it to someone or sell(I mean the oldest phone in my family is from 2015 right now and its still working fine and we have even older phone Just In case something happens to the other) . Bigger problem is the fact that certain companies make it practicly immposible to repair your phone for reasonable price or even at all
All I can say is this better come to the mainstream, I want this to become the norm where all manufacturing for electronics comes from recycled materials from e-waste. Im talking Apple, Intel, Samsung, all the tech compinies. I also want to see local e waste management too so that concurrent e-waste can be recycled. This means that 100% of the flow for materials for new products comes from concurrent e-waste, and as there will be still a flow for e-waste, as we will keep buying and throwing away items. This should be our future instead of landfill and stilly ways of resycling, and I hate that this hasnt become the norm even still in 2022. We also need right to repair so we can repair the items we allready have so we don't have to throw them away.
Its true I've worked at a gold / copper mine that has other trace elements . The ore bodies look like the wax blobs in a laval lamp . The ore bodies' shape and locations are mapped by extensive core drilling . The high grade deposit was 1.3~ grams/tonne and what is called open bottom , they have reached the economic cut off depth for retrieval at current metal prices . The low grade ore bodys are some where of .4 grams/ tonne . But when 2500 tonnes / hour are processed by 1 line of which may be 50% of the total through put the dollars soon at up .
@@machinerydoctor Yes, I've working in three hard rock open pit gold mines, two large sulphide copper/gold mines and a sulphide molybdenum mine. The largest copper/gold mine the ore grade was a life time average of .77% copper with .9 g/tonne gold and through put was over 80 k tonnes per day. Big bucks.
The electronic sand reminds me of that time when Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbs) came to his dad crying because he broke his dad's camera. He asked his dad if he could fix it, and his dad reassured him. Of course, just show it to me. Calvin then took out some sand sealed in a plastic bag. Kind of a weird moment, but yeah...
@@PHlophe Why should one company go through all the huge expense of hiring scientists and technicians, doing the research, the experimentation, and the invention of all the machinery - and then lose out on recouping some of their heavy initial costs by 'giving the technology away'? Can you afford to do something like that? It's perfectly (and morally) acceptable to either sell or license the technology to other countries. Good thing is, this is a New Zealand company - had it been a greedy US company, the right to buy/license the technology would be many times the cost.
It's crazy that I've been talking about this for years, and they have finally found a more ecologically sustainable way to process this waste, but what are they doing with the excess carbon and silicone waste which can still be refined? There are many things which need to be shown and talked about like what is the amount of chemical waste from these plants, what's the overhead relative to the time it takes to refine one ton of circuit boards, and what are the sourcing capabilities and the the viability of placing these plants at an efficient radius to plants which are willing to update their process from export preparation to a refining process. If we could get these processes subsidized then businesses will be willing to take on the overhead, which was the reason we exported it in the first place. I have put more thought into plants such as this than I'd like to admit, and with nothing to show for it to boot. Thankfully there are many different people who are working on these issues, and even though most cannot help with the end solutions, they can start by curtailing consumption, advocating for the reuse of technology, and to ensure that anti consumer practices such as planned obsolescence and the the denial of the right to repair (with proprietary tools no less) are stopped completely. This is an issue for every person who utilizes technology, it is your responsibility.
Because Peter Griffin would be dumb enough to fund this... The whole process is nonsense. It maybe working (in the best case) but the existing solution is already better.
I agree with the bathtub analogy. And the amount of money going in to extract these metals from mining should be diverted into creating the recycling plants. They say it costs a lot to make one, but never give estimations for the plants price. But they're quick to say the price for mining and how much the world wants to dump money into mining.
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This is amazing!!! They ask if it's a good idea?? Of course it is!! Getting rid of our E waste is an amazing thing. Getting the gold from it should be the bonus from it. As long as this process is not having a part of the problem then the whole world should jump on board with this!!!
Right I was just happy about the clean method that they say that use. Cyanide and mercury and all those other poisons they use to extract the gold is not good for the people or the Earth.
This does not get rid of E-Waste magically. It recovers the precious metals and it burns the plastics just like they do in landfills in the global south. Ecologically, this has not much of an impact.
This is actually quite clever in my opinion. It turns e-waste (or indeed anything that requires precious metals) into a quite valuable ore. Obviously it would be better not to have it generated at all, and to make it reusable when it is, but this is still a great idea in my opinion
That recycling is already done for decades via the copper recycling way. All the precious metals drop out as byproducts. I don't see an advantage in this tech to what is already known for a long time.
and just think of how many Africans would be deprived of being able to get e-waste and eek out a meager living to feed their family. Wouldn't that be fun.
People want to point the finger at combustion engine automobiles but electric machines cause just as much pollution if not more the United States for example 65% of our electricity is generated from fossil fuel and coal now imagine if every citizen government organization and business relied upon electric for everything from living and work needs plus transportation it would cause more pollution than combustion engines not to mention how lithium is mined and the waste is extremely toxic
You know they just used sulphuric acid to leach metals to make copper sulfate which is blue in solution and the other non precious metals salts? The dust/sand is already depleted from non precious metals and is not involed anymore in the electroplating process but gets "eaten/feasted on" by the microbes.
"Exporting waste is absolutely abhorrent. " So on Mr. Kiwi's scale of horrible human behavior, we have exporting wast at the "absolutely abhorrent" level. I'd like to know where murder, rape and patent infringement fit on this horrors scale. When I hear this level of hyperbole, I immediately discount all claims about his product by at least 99%.
I make a second hand phone last me up to 5 years for a reasonable price , people litter and create waste way too much we need to clean the planet up and spread the love !
would you spend $4 million dollars of your own money to find the liquid? And after you find the liquid would you give it to the world for free? How are you going to get your $4 million dollars back??
Man I love Business Insider, you guys have been doing some very good work. Thank you so much for this bit, it was very interesting and it can start a good conversation in our societies about these problems, maybe helping to inspire us to figure out what we should and can do about these problems. May God bless you all now and evermore.
I don't really see how this process could be seen as ecologically viable. Getting 150 grams of gold from a metric ton of e-waste is less than .015% by volume (if my math is correct). Unless there was some pretty advanced filtering, you're burning a significant amount of material, releasing plastics, carbon, and toxins into the air for a very small metal recovery rate.
Most recycling is smoke and mirrors. Extra trucks, using extra fuel and piling the goods in storage yards until they can't sell it and it ends up at the tip; where it would have anyway. Just so we can feel good that we are mindlessly doing something good for the environment.
150 grams a week is roughly 5 Troy ounces or in the neighborhood of $9000-$10000 USD a week and that’s just from the gold not to mention the palladium and copper. If their gross revenue is 15k a week and their operating costs are 1/2 that. It means 4-5 employees splitting like 7k a week for an industry they feel really passionate about.
To really Purify the Gold it takes tons of Chemicals Before it even is smelted into that solid gold. And that's after MINT removed the heavy Metals out of the e-waste. So he's only half way there.
This idea is good but only recovers 50% of what the companies are doing with acids. I dont know about but to loose 50% by going organic will not be comerically viable.
Not really. The waste chemical first goes into a 5 gallon bucket containing copper pipes. After 2-3 months the liquid is poured into a 2nd bucket containing iron/steel parts. after 2-3 months you take the liquid and change the ph to 7 and then you can safely dispose of it because it is not acidic or alkaline at ph7. it is tap water level. The residue at the bottom of the first bucket will contain any precious metals you missed. The residue at the bottom of the 2nd bucket will contain any copper you missed. Read more about this in the goldrefiningforum waste bucket management.
I have a clock radio I bought when I was a kid to wake up for work, I'm Retired now but it still works. Electronic components and functions can be compartmentalized and put on plug in boards that can be reused, those then can be unplugged from old devices and plugged into new ones with only minor restoration necessary
@@romanmurphy099 The Government is terrible at doing basically anything en mass (besides taking your money) and takes ages to do the small amount of good things it does manage to accomplish. Get the free market on board and it'll take off bigtime and instantly. People need to stop relying on the Government. Vote with your wallets. If you don't like how a company handles things like waste then don't buy their products. Or instead of buying the brand new IPhone every 6 months when they release a new one you buy a used one a few years old instead. It's small sure. But if everyone did that we wouldn't have issues this big in the first place.
Every penny invested in this tech is a penny wasted. If you know how recycling works this is utter nonsense. It's easy if you start with well sorted high grade waste with gold concentrations higher than any gold ore. The difficult and expensive part is getting there! Recycling that type of e-waste is already profitable in pretty much every country. And then they do a nonsense next step (dissolution of copper and tin in acid). Put the stuff through a regular copper recycling process then the precious metals come off as anode slimes, free of charge as a by product of copper recycling! But you don't get to waste state funding and burn through venture capital for something not as woke as using "something biological" for waste disposal.
All this just for metal gold 🥵 let me ask everyone 🙂 if you can only pick 1 of of 3, (food+water , money..or gold) just remember that you must stay in a jail cell for 13 days afterwards if you actually survive , whatever did you pick will be your ... explanation : with food+water...you might survive pass 8day ... money 💰 > depends if you can survive within 13days as for gold same profits as 💰🙃🙂😏🤔 I’m sure hunger will get the best of every1
BS. Each time you see one of thses videos, they omit to tell you that recycling gold is *NOT PROFITABLE* unless : 1) You DO NOT PAY for the electronic waste, 2) You DO NOT PAY for the work to collect the electronic wast, sort it, process it (Best is to have near-slaves in the third world or many kids), 3) You DO NOT PAY for the recycling of the old acids and other chemicals (Best is to throw them down the sewer or a nearby river), Even if 1, 2 & 3, the business is barely profitable unless you process TONS of electronic waste. The chemicals (acids, SMB, etc), the hardware, and the energy (electricity, natural gas) has a price too. and do not compe with "It is good for the environment" because no, it's not. NEVER trust a startup on its business model. Each of these companies will rely on state financial help.
They extract not only gold, but also tantalum which is one of the important materials in portable electronics that act as capacitors and store data after our phones are turned off. It is not as expensive as gold but it is not cheap. It is a rare item.
Takes phones and tablets, we need to get it out of our heads that we have to buy a new one every couple of years. The phone I am using right now is a Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime which is 4 years old and looks brand new and works perfectly. Companies like Apple have in the past made it too expensive to repair and prevented third party repair shops from repairing products. A hugh proportion of E-waste ends up in landfills with very little wrong with it or worse just out of fashion!
It’ll help if people stop buying the next best thing every quarter of the year. I met some people like this and it always makes me look at them funny. Funny thing is, they look at me funny for having four, five year old gadgets. Or for buying used gadgets. Then they assume I’m broke/cheap. 😂 I personally just don’t see the point of having the latest and greatest when the older one’s do the same things 🤷🏾♂️ …..
I remember a similar video where everything was stripped off of the boards then shoveled into a furnace to be melted together. They then used similar baths and magnets to separate everything. Was a neat video
