One ton of circuit boards from old e-waste can contain 100 times more gold than a ton of ore mined from the ground. Now, scrappers like Wade Cawley in Sydney, Australia, are cashing in. He’s partnered with Mint Innovation, a company that invented a safer and cleaner way to recover precious metals from electronics. In one day, Mint can salvage up to $85,000 in gold from recycled electronics.
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00:00 This bar of gold came from the trash.
00:04 In fact, the materials inside the electronics thrown out every year are worth an estimated
00:10 $60 billion.
00:11 There's palladium, there's ptanelum, there's tin, there's lead, there's steel.
00:18 To extract the most precious metals, you usually need brute force or a powerful acid bath.
00:29 In many places, the scavengers who process e-waste can't afford proper safety measures.
00:36 So now, a growing number of solo recyclers are proving they can make money by safely
00:42 handling it in their own garages.
00:45 We could potentially recycle all of our e-waste domestically instead of exporting it overseas.
00:51 Wade Cauley is a dumpster diver on a mission to keep electronics out of landfills.
00:57 His work led him to partner with a startup that grinds the circuit boards he collects
01:03 and recovers metals from them using a secret brew that comes from nature.
01:09 Some of it's microbial, some of it's fungal.
01:13 So how much money do solo scrappers really make?
01:17 And can they change the way the global e-waste trade works?
01:21 We went to Sydney, Australia to find out.
01:26 Everyone knows when Wade Cauley is coming through town.
01:29 Family nicknames it Flash because it's red and it's electric and it buzzes around everywhere.
01:35 Today, he's on his way to a local repair shop that puts aside devices it can't fix.
01:41 They didn't really have a way of recycling things and they really wanted to.
01:45 Over the past decade, electronic waste around the world has grown by at least 60%.
01:52 As of 2019, it's over 50 million metric tons of trash every year.
01:58 Wade works alone, breaking down tech with drills, screwdrivers and...
02:03 These are actually electric garden pruners, but I have repurposed them to be able to cut
02:08 through cable.
02:11 Doing this work comes with risks, but Wade takes precautions.
02:16 So I have to put my respirator on to take these fluorescent tubes out because if they
02:19 break they contain mercury inside of them, which is obviously poisonous.
02:25 After a few minutes of work, he finally uncovers the treasure he's after.
02:30 So this is the main circuit board and this is where all the gold and silver is in all
02:35 the little black chips.
02:38 Wade works to ensure that every part of a device is properly handled, even the hard
02:43 to recycle plastic.
02:46 Recovering the copper, gold and palladium inside circuit boards is possible at massive
02:52 recycling facilities.
02:54 But it's expensive and requires corporations and consumers to properly dispose of their
03:00 devices.
03:01 Today, only about 9% of e-waste in Australia is formally collected.
03:07 The US is only slightly better at 15%.
03:12 So unwanted tech piles up on the curb, waiting for treasure hunters to find it.
03:19 All right, there's another nice board.
03:22 I envision that small recyclers and scrappers are going to continue to grow as a force both
03:30 within the United States and a lot of other developed countries.
03:34 Ernie Pietrzik is a retired Navy captain who started scrapping in 2019.
03:40 His YouTube channel, Shark Scrapper, is one of hundreds teaching people about this business.
03:47 Every minute that you spend scrapping stuff down is eating away into your margin.
03:51 And sometimes you might only make a couple bucks an hour on something.
03:56 If you're just doing this as a one-person operation out of the back of your truck, you'd
04:01 be better off to just go work at McDonald's.
04:04 Scrapping doesn't really pay off until you can invest in heavy-duty equipment that can
04:09 cost tens of thousands of dollars.
04:12 When you put it on one of our shaker tables, the metals go one way and the waste goes another
04:17 way.
04:19 Jason Gaber comes from the world of underground mining.
04:23 But now he sells crushers that can be used for e-waste.
04:28 E-waste is going to be the richest ore of the future.
04:32 For many, e-scrapping remains a side hustle.
04:35 But for some of the world's poorest people, it's the only way to make a living.
04:41 Every year, rich countries ship thousands of tons of e-waste to places like Delhi, India,
04:47 a world capital of unregulated e-waste recycling.
04:51 There's a little risk in this work, but you have to do it out of helplessness.
04:58 Gulzar was 14 when we talked to him in 2023.
05:02 He's one of about 50,000 people who scavenge here, mostly from piles imported from countries
05:09 like the United States and China.
05:12 Gulzar starts his morning selling breakfast at his father's food cart.
05:16 After school, he heads to trash piles like this one to sort through old cell phones,
05:22 computers and video game controllers.
05:25 Few people doing this work have access to gloves or other safety equipment.
05:31 "As a coltainer, I have to wear gloves and gloves."
05:38 And to get at the valuable metals, many scavengers burn e-waste.
05:42 That's a problem that experts say has long-lasting impacts on human health, including stunted
05:48 growth, miscarriages, organ damage and bone density loss.
05:53 In 2021, India recycled a third of the 1.5 million metric tons of e-waste it produced,
06:01 a recycling rate about twice that of North America.
06:05 But only a fraction of Indian waste was handled by authorized recyclers.
06:10 Not to mention, the country imports an estimated 50,000 metric tons of e-waste each year.
06:20 With his business Rekindle Me, Wade's trying to prevent e-waste from getting shipped overseas.
06:26 It would have a really good impact globally if instead of exporting it overseas and putting
06:30 it on the less fortunate, being able to take care of our own waste.
06:35 Today Wade's dropping off a truckload of materials he's collected at Mint Innovation, a local
06:41 startup that grinds circuit boards.
06:43 Hey Wade, how's it going?
06:46 Hello, good.
06:47 Thanks for coming past.
06:48 No worries.
06:49 I've got a couple of batches here you've brought past.
06:51 Mint pays him about $3.50 per kilo.
06:55 So today he made about $3,500.
06:59 How much did you bring along today?
07:01 One ton altogether.
07:02 Typically we're going to get something like, I don't know, 250, 300 kilos of copper could
07:09 be in there and maybe anything from 100 to 200 grams of gold.
07:16 We'll see where we get to with that.
07:18 But I've got a wee sample here of gold from the processor.
07:22 I'll give it to you now as a down payment.
07:27 Maybe you have to give it back.
07:29 Mint runs electronic waste through a liquid bath of bacteria, fungi and other organic
07:35 materials.
07:37 Business Insider first visited Mint's pilot facility in New Zealand in 2021.
07:43 Now the company's scaled up with a facility here in Sydney, Australia that's nearly five
07:48 times bigger.
07:50 So this is our first plant and what we are gearing up is being able to build these in
07:57 multiple cities around the world.
07:59 It's almost entirely automated, preventing workers from coming into direct contact with
08:04 hazardous materials.
08:06 The circuit boards heading up the two-story conveyor belt contain about 70% plastics and
08:11 30% metals like copper, silver, palladium and gold.
08:17 This machine crushes them into smaller particles, which will then be dissolved in liquid.
08:21 We've got a big plastic tank behind me here.
08:24 It's 25,000 litres.
08:27 It'll sit in this mixing tank for a few hours.
08:31 After that, it'll be sent over to one of the filter presses.
08:35 This blue fluid contains a high concentration of copper, tin and other less valuable metals.
08:43 Mint uses electricity to pull out the copper.
08:45 We simply put that through a series of plates, pass it over that, that have electric current
08:51 flowing through them and that plates out the copper from solution.
08:55 Now the solution is ready to extract the gold.
08:58 That's where Mint's special sauce comes in.
09:02 Mint's team identified these tiny helpers in 2017 through a series of research trips
09:08 to places like abandoned mines or fields with rusty equipment.
09:13 They collected species of bacteria and fungi that evolved to bond with specific metals.
09:19 So you can see this residual dark purple colour that's left over biomass that's got the gold
09:27 stuck to it and it's formed these beautiful purple nanoparticles.
09:31 The purple cake will go to an off-site refiner to be turned into something easier to recognize.
09:37 So this gold bar that I'm holding in my hands is about 1.2, 1.3 kilos and that's the amount
09:45 of gold that this facility is recovering each day as an operation.
09:49 At today's prices, that's nearly $85,000 worth of gold.
09:54 The company says its Sydney plant could recover more than $30 million of gold every year.
10:01 Mint also says its process has a smaller environmental footprint compared to other forms of industrial
10:07 recycling.
10:08 What we've created is a closed loop system where what actually leaves the plant is benign
10:14 and not a chemical waste stream.
10:19 That's what helped convince Wade to process his treasures here.
10:23 It feels amazing to see that my circuit boards have finally made it to the right place and
10:27 I know they're being recycled properly and it's really cool to see it all in place now.
10:32 Wade started collecting old electronics when he was just a teen.
10:37 He'd store them in his mom's garage.
10:40 And I'd constantly say to Wade, do you think there's a way of condensing this a little
10:44 bit just so that we can get out the front door?
10:47 This is a 1960s TV made in Australia.
10:52 This was my first old laptop or piece of technology that kind of started my obsession with just
10:59 anything vintage and electrical and stuff like that.
11:01 Yeah, I just like to tinker on them and see if I can get them working again.
11:06 I think it's important as a historical standpoint to keep things like this because there's getting
11:12 less and less by the day of these older systems and yeah, they're actually worth far more
11:17 than the gold and silver inside of them in my opinion.
11:20 But Wade may want to consider mining some of his own collection.
11:24 Ever heard they don't build them like they used to?
11:27 Well, it's true.
11:29 Starting in the late 90s, many companies began using gold-plated wiring instead of solid
11:34 gold to lower costs.
11:37 For example, integrated circuits from a 1982 IBM PC now sell for about $180 a pound.
11:46 An Apple CPU, something you'd find inside a neon iMac from 20 years later, only fetches
11:52 about $4 a pound.
11:55 Most of the computer hardware is not that valuable.
12:00 There is of course going to be some gold, some copper, some platinum, some palladium,
12:05 but minute amounts.
12:08 Environmental activist Jim Puckett started the Basel Action Network, or BAN, in 1997
12:15 to monitor and stop illegal exporting of hazardous trash like e-waste.
12:20 We need to think of handling our waste as a service to society because we don't want
12:26 to be trashed with waste.
12:27 We don't want pollution.
12:29 Wade says his business will continue to earn a modest income until he can invest in new
12:34 equipment.
12:36 But doing the right thing is what keeps him going.
12:39 Motivates me in knowing that it's actually going to be recycled and not going to landfill
12:43 and then my hobby kind of feeds into that because when I get old stuff I quite enjoy
12:48 that.
12:49 So it's a really good feeling job for me.
12:57 (upbeat music)