Re: A lot of kit is "designed" to be thrown away
I wonder if it's possible to pick up all the e-waste, grind it to sub-millimetre grains and then run the mess through the same set of processes used to extract gold, cobalt, lithium, tantalum etc etc from nature?
As I understand it, that's pretty much how it's done. Grind up scrap, use magnets to sort ferrous & non-ferrous and send to a smelter. Or waste is picked for parts that might contain more valuable stuff, ie chips to grind and smelt for gold recovery. Downside is cost, waste, and potential pollution from recovery processes. Plus AFAIK, some materials like lithium can't easily be recovered from batteries, or recovered in a useful, reusable form.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
