The Royal Mint has begun extracting gold embedded in old phones and TVs to make commemorative coins and jewellery, in what has been hailed as a “world first”.
The UK coin maker has opened a factory in South Wales that will process up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards from e-waste every year.
Anne Jessopp, chief executive of the Royal Mint, said it is “transforming for the future” and that the opening of its precious metals recovery plant “marks a key step in our journey”.
In addition to recycling the circuit boards it receives, the Royal Mint is also working to receive all the items – computers, cell phones, server equipment – to be able to participate in the entire process.
This comes as a recent UN report states that e-waste is increasing five times faster than e-waste recycling – with a jump of 82% in 2010, to a record 62 million tonnes in 2022. .
The UK, meanwhile, is among the worst offenders per capita, according to Mark Loveridge, business unit director at Precious Metals Recovery.
Loveridge said the manufacturing processes, which aim to reduce mining, are “world-firsts”.
He said the amount of e-waste in the UK is “the equivalent of around 25 kilos per person”, or the equivalent of a 50-inch TV.
It takes around 600 mobile phones to create one of the rings in the Mint’s 886 collection, weighing around 7.5g – similar to the weight of a £1 coin.
On average, one tonne of circuit boards produces 165g of gold, which is equivalent to around £9,000.
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Silver and gold are used by the official manufacturer of British coins to produce jewelry and commemorative coins.
The recovered non-precious metals such as copper, tin, steel, aluminum are sent to other companies as raw materials to transform them into products such as sheets, bars and rebars to manufacture new products.
“We all have our pot at home where we put our coins. The same goes for our electronic devices,” Loveridge said.
“You probably have a few cell phones in a drawer and a TV in the back room or garage or something that needs to go back into the supply chain so it can be recycled and those materials recovered.”
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