The Royal Mint, the UK’s coin maker, has opened a plant in Llantrisant, Wales, to extract gold from electronic waste. The company’s new industrial site will remove the precious metal from old circuit boards, which are classified as e-waste. The gold extracted will initially be used to produce jewellery and later will be utilised for commemorative coins. According to the United Nations, e-waste is a rapidly increasing issue, as 62 million tonnes of it were thrown away in 2022. The UN’s latest report forecasts a 33% increase in the amount of discarded electronics by 2030.
Head of sustainability at The Royal Mint, Inga Doak called the process ‘urban mining’ because it involves turning a waste product created by society into a finite resource. Pieces containing gold are sent to a chemical plant on-site, where they are subjected to chemicals that leech the gold out into the liquid. The ground-breaking aspect of this process is that it uses room temperature and uses low energy solutions that are non-toxic, and LEighton John, the Royal Mint’s director of operations explained that it “pulls gold really quickly”
E-waste is a sizeable problem in the UK, the second-largest tech waste producer per capita, after Norway. The plant located in Llantrisant will process over 4,000 tonnes of e-waste annually, preventing the waste from being shipped overseas or burnt in high energy smelters. CEO Anne Jessopp said that the Mint needed to diversify and that the move towards e-waste processing saved jobs. The company is also examining what to do with the circuit board materials and looking into whether ground-up boards are suitable for use in the construction industry.
In conclusion, The Royal Mint has entered the waste business as a result of dwindling coin production due to the decreasing usage of cash. Although the company has been producing the UK’s official coins for over a thousand years, it has ventured into e-waste processing to reap financial rewards and maintain employment levels
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