{"id":67520,"date":"2024-04-23T19:09:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T00:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67520"},"modified":"2024-04-23T19:09:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T00:09:19","slug":"staggering-quantities-of-valuable-metals-are-winding-up-in-the-garbage-bin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67520","title":{"rendered":"Staggering Quantities of Valuable Metals Are Winding Up in the Garbage Bin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Staggering Quantities of Valuable Metals Are Winding Up in the Garbage Bin<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

Recycling more of the copper, aluminum, and other minerals in our old electronics could reduce the need for mining.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo:\u00a0vladdon\u00a0(Shutterstock)<\/figcaption>
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To build all of the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies necessary to fight climate change, we\u2019re going to need\u00a0a lot more metals<\/a>. Mining those metals from the Earth creates damage and pollution that threaten ecosystems and communities. But there\u2019s another potential source of the copper, nickel, aluminum, and rare-earth minerals needed to stabilize the climate: the mountain of\u00a0electronic waste<\/a>\u00a0humanity discards each year.<\/p>\n

Exactly how much of each clean energy metal is there in the laptops, printers, and smart fridges the world discards? Until recently, no one really knew. Data on more obscure metals like neodymium and palladium, which play small but critical roles in established and emerging green energy technologies, has been especially hard to come by.<\/p>\n

Now, the United Nations has taken a first step toward filling in these data gaps with the latest installment of its periodic report on e-waste around the world. Released last month, the new\u00a0Global E-Waste Monitor<\/a>\u00a0shows the staggering scale of the e-waste crisis, which reached a new record in 2022 when the world threw out 62 million metric tons of electronics. And for the first time, the report includes a detailed breakdown of the metals present in our electronic garbage, and how often they are being recycled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is very little reporting on the recovery of metals [from e-waste] globally,\u201d lead report author Kees Bald\u00e9 told Grist. \u201cWe felt it was our duty to get more facts on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those facts is that some staggering quantities of energy transition metals are winding up in the garbage bin.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Staggering Quantities of Valuable Metals Are Winding Up in the Garbage Bin Recycling more of the copper, aluminum, and other minerals in our old electronics could reduce the need for mining. Photo:\u00a0vladdon\u00a0(Shutterstock) To build all of the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies necessary to fight climate change, we\u2019re going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1156,5677,15759,10536,34330,647,671],"class_list":["post-67520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-e-waste","tag-gizmodo","tag-grist","tag-landfill","tag-maddie-stone","tag-precious-metals","tag-recycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67521,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67520\/revisions\/67521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}