Royal Mint Strikes Gold in E-Waste Recycling Initiative

The Royal Mint in Britain has found an innovative way to extract gold from electronic waste. The state-owned mint, responsible for producing British coins and medals, has set up a facility near Cardiff in Wales that can process around 4,000 tonnes of e-waste per year.

Behind barbed wire and coded security gates, the plant uses a patented process to dissolve gold at room temperature. This method allows for efficient recovery without generating hazardous waste or requiring external energy input.

The gold is then refined and used to make luxury jewelry under the mint's '886' brand. The initiative is notable in an industry where much e-waste goes unrecycled, with only 22.3 percent of electronic waste being properly collected and recycled worldwide in 2022, according to a United Nations report.

Sean Millard, the Royal Mint's development director, stated that each Bank of England office phone contains around 30 milligrams of gold, worth about three pounds at current prices. A modern smartphone contains roughly four pounds' worth of gold.