Royal Mint Turns E-Waste into Gold Jewellery Amid Soaring Prices

The Royal Mint in Wales is turning electronic waste into luxury jewellery by extracting gold from old devices. The plant, which opened two years ago, can process around 4,000 tonnes of e-waste a year and contains 'about 400 kilos of gold', said the Mint's development director, Sean Millard.

The gold is recovered using a patented process that dissolves it at room temperature, unlike traditional methods that involve high temperatures or corrosive acid mixtures. The extracted gold is then refined to improve its purity and used to make jewellery for the Royal Mint's '886' brand.

A modern smartphone contains roughly four pounds' worth of gold, while each Bank of England office phone recycled by the Mint contains around 30 milligrammes of gold, worth around £3 at current prices. The initiative is unusual in a sector where much electronic waste never reaches proper recycling facilities, and only 22.3 per cent of e-waste was properly collected and recycled worldwide in 2022.

Soaring gold prices have made recovering it increasingly attractive, with the metal climbing to a record high of nearly US$5,600 an ounce at the end of January. Professor Jason Hallett said that when the price of gold is really high, 'the cost of processing the waste to recover the gold is irrelevant', making alternative solutions commercially viable.