Talking about recycling
3rd February 2020
Earlier this week Fran (our Business and Compliance Manager) visited the IT and Computer Science students at the College of FE to talk about computer hardware recycling. Fran talked students through the importance of recycling hardware and electrical waste in order to recover precious metals and rare earth elements.
The average iPhone contains 0.034g of gold, 0.034g of silver and less than 0.0001g of platinum. This doesn’t sound like much, but 45% of UK households have between 2 – 5 unused devices (Royal Society for Chemistry, 2019), and 39% of adults have more than 10 devices. If those figures are multiplied by the Guernsey population (x60,000) those micro weights suddenly become quite significant.
It is estimated that less than 10% of mobile phones, globally, are recycled. But in the next 100 years, manufacturing industries will run out of 6 of the metals and elements found in common electrical devices, such as mobile phones and tablets (RSC, 2019).12 of the 17 rare earth elements have no satisfactory replacement, offering the same properties or functionality.
This shortage will affect our ability to manufacture renewable energy technologies, such as solar panels. A rare earth element called “Indium” is used extensively in touch screens as it bonds easily to glass, is transparent, and conducts electricity. It is also used in solar panels. Neodymium, similarly used in electrical devices because of its strong magnetic properties allowing smaller data storage units (so smaller, sleeker phones and tablet), is used in the manufacture of wind turbines (British Geological Survey).
As well as the impact that shortages will have on the manufacturing industries; Fran talked to students about the impact that mining for raw materials has on the environment and the associated health and safety and environmental dangers of recycling electrical waste in an unsafe way. In 2018, The Guardian tracked electrical waste leaving the EU using GPS units, and found that 67% of e-Waste is being exported to developing countries such as Ghana. Processing methods include uncontrolled burning of electrical waste to expose copper; and high incidences of respiratory and cardiac disorders amongst labourers burning e-Waste without adequate protective equipment. Burning e-Waste results in a recovery rate of less than 50%, compared to recovery rates of more than 90% when following best practices.
Students also discussed the importance of considering sustainability in design: manufacturing industries need to design products with end-of-life in mind, to ensure that the world’s finite sources of precious and rare earth metals can be recovered and re-used.
We finished off the talk by mentioning the importance of secure data erasure and destruction at the end of hardware life cycles; and students were invited to step outside into Galaxy’s new on-site shredding vehicle, and observe the destruction of some hard disk drives.
Earlier this month, we also presented to the Chamber of Commerce Sustainable Business Initiative. If you would like us to visit your school or business, please get in touch. As part of our commitment to environmental protection and sustainability, we are happy to visit schools and businesses and chat informally about e-Waste, the process of recycling, and sustainability. Alternatively, we can deliver more structured staff training sessions; or put you in touch with some of the environmental charities we work with if you are looking for a CSR project or team building activity.
