CIRCULAR REVOLUTION: THE URBAN METALLIC MINE

‘We buy used motherboards’, the gentleman stated.

At that point, I tapped the shoulder of one of my students as I hinted to him about this business opportunity.

As a lecturer, I occasionally expose my students to industry and this was such a time.

I had brought my industrial chemistry students for a visit to one of the e-waste recycling plants in Nairobi and the trip was worth the while.

E-WASTE

I remember one of the attendants in the recycling plant telling us that they collect e-waste (especially consisting of computer motherboards), package them, and weigh them to dispatch them to Europe.

He stated that there aren’t facilities around to extract rare earth and precious metals that these wastes contain.

Now, think with me for a minute.

Imagine an industry paying e-waste collectors to bring their waste material only for it to be dispatched abroad?

Anything that is dispatched to western nations carries with it dollar value.

And e-waste is no different.

PICTURE THIS

Kenya is a continental IT hub.

I mean we’ve all seem the mushrooming opportunities in the tech sector coupled with the startup funding that goes with it.

But come to think of it, with the fast evolution of computer technologies, what happens to the obsolete?

Zoom out of this nerdy scenario and focus on the motor industry.

We’ve all noticed the increase in the number of hybrid and electric vehicles.

These machines are either partially or fully powered by battery technology.

So what happens when these devices run out of steam?

ENTER E-WASTE RECYCLING

Electronic devices are wondrous creations of man.

They easen our lives…

They help drive medical devices…

They drive our cars…

They power our homes…

Tech has become synonymous to life itself.

But when the devices pack up, what do we do with them?

Well, e-waste recycling is increasingly gaining prominence for a couple of reasons.

BRINGING BATTERIES TO LIFE

Again, while still in that e-waste recycling centre, we were taken to a workshop run by a company that brings ‘dead batteries’ back to life.

How so?

Well, they have a mechanism of recharging the batteries optimally so that they gain at least a large portion of their initial ‘juice’.

They then arrange these revived batteries in a pack, retest their voltage and sell them especially to vendors in the solar energy sector.

As we walked through the facility, one couldn’t shake the feeling that this workshop (and others like it) could become crucial in the near future when hybrid and e-vehicles desire their ‘dead’ batteries to be boosted.

But e-waste recycling is also useful in another front.

RECOVERY OF RARE EARTH AND PRECIOUS METALS

We’ve all seen images of children laboring in mines in places like the Congo.

They do those so that we can enjoy technology.

Cobalt, platinum, gold, silver, niobium, tantalum, tungsten, copper etc. are all examples of precious and rare earth metals that are trapped in some of our electronic devices.

Extraction of these metals from nations like the Congo or South Africa require lots of energy and leave a large carbon footprint.

But what if we were to recover them from e-waste and use them as raw materials for manufacturing?

I guess this is the reason why the e-waste was being packaged for ‘export’.

But isn’t there a way we could improve our systems to process the rare earth metals out of e-waste locally?

There are several ways of reclaiming precious metals from e-waste such as acid leaching, electrolysis, precipitation etc.

All these techniques are taught to chemistry students in university and could be put into effective use.

IN CONCLUSION

E-waste recycling will become the next big thing in our tech-crazed world in light of the heavy focus on sustainability and circularity.

But interested parties need to roll up their sleeves and use their know-how to make it work.

Already some level of recycling is taking place – recovery of plastic casings, copper cables, glass etc.

However, e-waste recycling needs to be seen not just as an improvement to our environment but as a means to recover useful raw materials that drive industry, create employment, and generate wealth.

Originally posted on Cleannovate blog