SCYCLE - Sustainable Cycles’ Post

UK Gold Rush................ The company has built a large industrial plant on its site in Llantrisant in Wales to remove the precious metal from old circuit boards. E-waste, which includes anything from old phones and computers to TVs, is a rapidly growing problem - the UN says 62m tonnes were thrown away in 2022. There’s no shortage of e-waste for the Royal Mint to target. The UN's 2024 e-waste report places the UK as the second biggest producer of tech trash per capita, beaten only by Norway. Four thousand tonnes of e-waste should generate up to 450kg of gold, which is worth about £27m at current prices. https://lnkd.in/eAKE8Fn5

UK Royal Mint To Extract Gold From E-Waste: "The Royal Mint, which has produced coins since the 9th Century, has begun to recover gold from electronic waste as the use of cash has declined and fewer new coins are needed," writes Slashdot reader newcastlejon. "In 2022, construction began on a new site in Llantrisant, Wales. This facility will now be used to initially produce gold for jewelry and later for commemorative coins." The BBC reports: At the Royal Mint plant, piles of circuit boards are being fed into the new facility. First, they are heated to remove their various components. Then the array of detached coils, capacitors, pins and transistors are sieved, sorted, sliced and diced as they move along a conveyor belt. Anything with gold in it is set aside. The gold-laden pieces go to an on-site chemical plant. They're tipped into a chemical solution which leaches the gold out into the liquid. This is then filtered, leaving a powder behind. It looks pretty nondescript but this is actually pure gold -- it just needs to be heated in a furnace to be transformed into a gleaming nugget. "Traditional gold recovery processes are very energy intensive and use very toxic chemicals that can only be used once, or they go to high energy smelters and they're basically burnt," says Leighton John, the Royal Mint's operations director. "The groundbreaking thing for us is the fact that this chemistry is used at room temperature, at very low energy, it's recyclable and pulls gold really quickly." "Our aim is to process over 4,000 tonnes of e-waste annually," says Leighton John. "Traditionally this waste is shipped overseas but we're keeping it in the UK and we're keeping those elements in the UK for us to use. It's really important." The report notes that the UK is the second biggest producer of tech trash per capita, beaten only by Norway. According to the UN, e-waste is a rapidly growing problem, with 62 million tons discarded in 2022. That's expected to increase by a third by 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WEEE is NOT all WASTE We seem, so quick as society, in business and personal life, to fall into the built in obsolesce trap and just go for, new is good. Check out your draws and cupboards in the office and at home and see for yourself the amount of WEEE waste you have. NOW this WEEE has the raw materials, we scare the environment looking for, already in it. Yes, it takes a little more complexity to get it back, but better than digging/ mining for more. I'd be more than happy to discuss your ITAD needs and how Addition Int www.additionint.com can assist putting together a Compliant, Secure and Certificate process for your business, to help beat our need to mine the precious metals, we already have, for our IT craving. https://lnkd.in/e9Y7Pfhd

📉Recycling silver helps to save a vast amount of energy & carbon emissions. We are leading the way ✔️ Metal mining uses a huge amount of energy to extract metal ore, as well as emitting greenhouses gasses through its smelting and processing operations. Using recycled silver skips this entire process, saving 95% more energy compared to using raw materials. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries further claims that recycling metal can cut harmful emissions by between 300 - 500 million tons. The use of recycled silver can reduce deforestation and habitat destruction. Metal mines require thousands of acres of land. To make space for their operations space many metal mines have slashed and burned rainforest including the Amazon, leaving a devastating loss of habitat for plants and wildlife and pollution to the ecosystem. Furthermore, waste minerals and rocks have been known to become toxic through acid drainage, for example in The Grasberg Mine in Papua, which then seeps into the air and water, further damaging habitats. Recycling metal reduces mining waste by 97% according to Green Matters. Here at Seekd.co.uk we are a community committed to doing the right thing ~ recycling & upcyling materials or only using fair trade verified metals. Shop with US 💜 full blog in bio 📉 https://lnkd.in/en7qx52Y #energy #carbonemissions #metal #miningindustry #recycling #recyclereuse #silver #gold #metals #reducewaste #recycledsilver #ethicaljewellery

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence's Recycling Chart of the Quarter this month highlights the requirement for processing capacity outside of Asia in order to prevent battery materials leakage from other regions, as outlined by Alex Sargent in the post attached! 🌎 Current operational recycling capacity in the West focuses predominantly on black mass generation, and significant investment into the commercialisation of processing capacity is necessary in order to generate the desired battery related chemicals for the growing demand of recycled materials. ♻️ With relatively low volumes of scrap available in the short term, and with the highest proportion of this scrap coming from the process scrap pool until the mid-2030s, competition to obtain material for recycling is high. Legislation is key in driving the economic case for these facilities to get up and running in upcoming years in anticipation of the growing scrap pool of end of life lithium ion batteries! 🔋 For more information on Benchmark's Recycling Forecast offering, feel free to reach out! ✉️

♻ Recycling Forecast Chart of the Quarter ♻ 📈 Benchmark Mineral Intelligence captured data has shown significant investment and partnerships formed to accelerate lithium-ion battery recycling capacity across the globe, with a significant number of facilities coming online in the last year. 🔋Recycling is a complicated process and the generation of battery relevant chemicals from scrapped batteries commonly requires two major processes: 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Battery pack/modules/cells can be pretreated using pyrometallurgy or shredding. Pyrometallurgy involves burning the scrapped material to generate an alloy of the valuable metals. Shredding and separation leads to a product known as black mass, a composite of powders which contains valuable elements from the battery. 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲: The most common recovery technique used on the aforementioned products of pretreatment is hydrometallurgy, or acid leaching, which enables extraction of valuable metals such as Li, Ni and Co as metal salts, mixed hydroxide precipitates, or even as precursor cathode active material. 🔁 Each process requires different technologies and significant capital investment, leading to a landscape where pretreatment facilities create black mass to feed into recovery facilities. Some facilities, especially in the East, integrate both pretreatment and recovery. 🌏 The market shows regional disparity: the West focuses on pretreatment, while the East has a greater emphasis on recovery and integration, causing black mass to move East. ♻ To prevent loss of critical battery materials from regions with less processing capacity, investments in localised capabilities will be required. Political sentiment and legislation will also be important to support onshoring critical markets. 📰 Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Q2 2024 Recycling Forecast has just been released, providing the latest insights on the advancement of the recycling industry. ✉ For more information, send me a message! #recycling #batteries #batteryrecycling #lithiumionbatteries

Metal recycling plays a crucial role in conserving natural resources and promoting sustainability. By recycling metals like steel and aluminum, we can save essential raw materials and reduce the need for mining. Metal recycling also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption during production. Additionally, it reduces waste sent to landfills and the environmental impact associated with waste disposal. Metal recycling creates jobs and stimulates economic growth. Participating in metal recycling is vital for building a greener future and reducing our reliance on mining. Let's join the movement and make a difference. Metal reusing and recycling also conserves natural resources. Recycling one ton of steel conserves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone. Recycling a ton of aluminium conserves up to 8 tons of bauxite ore and 14 megawatt hours of electricity.⠀ Visit our Locations or email us. 📍17 Lucca Rd, Wyong NSW 2259 📍2/123 Station Rd, Seven Hills NSW 2147 📧 info@worldwidemetal.com.au #sustainability #ecofriendly #sustainable #zerowaste #environment #sustainableliving #recycle #nature #recycle #reuse #metalscrap #recycling #metals #scrapyard #metaltrading #nonferrous #copper #aluminium #worldtrade #shipping #export #ironscrap #australia #sydney #economy #scrapmetal #construction #copperscrap #iron

#LICY - Global Metal Recycling Market Expected to Reach 386 Billion By 2030 https://buff.ly/3z1a8Ti 2024-06-18 09:00:38 ET Palm Beach, FL – June 18, 2024 – The scrap metal markets are projected to continue to grow in the coming years. Scrap metals collected from various sources are raw materials used in metal recycling. Scrap metals are separated and processed several times ...

Did you know that e-waste is being generated five times faster than our current recycling capacity? According to recent research, the world's e-waste mountain is expected to grow by 30% to a staggering 82 billion metric tonnes by 2030. That's a big problem we can't ignore. In 2022, e-waste contained 4 million tons of metals that are critical for the energy transition. But we're wasting billions of dollars worth of these valuable resources in our growing e-waste problem. Mining for these metals is expensive and comes with environmental and social issues. Some are even pushing for controversial seabed mining to get these resources. But I think urban mining of e-waste could be a more sustainable solution. The UK and U.S. are supporting research into urban mining. The EU is setting a recycling target of 25% for critical raw materials. Big brands are being urged to support repair, and four U.S. states are passing right-to-repair laws. We need to think about the whole lifecycle of our electronics and move towards a circular economy. This can reduce the environmental impact of e-waste and conserve valuable resources for a sustainable future. What do you think we should do to solve the growing e-waste problem? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this important issue.

THE ENGINEER (UK) Recycling practices E-waste could help close UK’s net zero copper gap Abandoned charging cables and consumer electronics could hold the solution to the UK’s impending copper shortage, according to new research. The study, conducted by Recycle your Electricals with Bloomberg Intelligence, found that UK households contain 38,449 tonnes of copper inside unwanted and discarded electricals. The UK currently uses around 250,0000 tonnes of copper per year, but this figure is expected to rise considerably to meet the demands of growing electrification. By 2033, the global copper gap is estimated to be 6.5 million tonnes, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.