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What is Urban Mining? +
When the world’s economy starts to feel the effects of recession elsewhere, people become creative with earning money. Urban mining is a relatively new trend where one takes apart electronics in order to collect the gold, copper, and silver inside. China is known for being the leader in this new industry, however over the past few years, the Japanese have also started to collect the precious metals.
What makes Urban Mining so popular? A ton of ore from the gold mines only nets refiners about 5 grams of gold. You have to remember that gold ore is mostly rock and other elements mixed with the gold. On the other hand, a ton of cell phones gives around 150 grams of gold. So you can see why Urban Mining is becoming popular. With Japan being such a technologically and electronically advanced nation, one could only expect them to want to dismantle their old cellphones instead of shipping them to the USA with “Brand New” labels on them. Yahoo via Gizmodo
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April 29th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
hmmm, gold? you mean other metals? I didn’t know there is gold in my cellphone.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Well I was speaking about electronics in general. However gold is used more than you think in many different types of electronics. Many times it’s just gold plated pieces to improve performance though.