Royal Mint’s E-Waste Recycling Moves Forward

The UK’s Royal Mint (TRM) has announced plans to build a new plant in Llantrisant, South Wales, to recover gold from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).Construction of the plant has started and, when fully operational in 2023, expects to process up to 90 tonnes of UK-sourced circuit boards per week, generating ‘hundreds of kilograms’ of gold each year.

Last October, the company announced that it had acquired the technology to recover gold and other precious and rare earth metals from discarded electronics, such as phones and laptops, from Canadian company Excir (see CN October 2021).

Excir claims that its sustainable precious metal technology can recover 99% of gold from e-waste. Up to 7% of the world’s gold may be contained within the circuit boards of this waste. The UN puts the figure of e-waste produced each year at 50 million tonnes, and growing. Less than 20% is recycled, with the remained being incinerated or going to landfill. Of that 20%, the majority is smelted in high temperature furnaces, which consume considerable energy as well as toxic chemicals.