True environmentalists: refining gold from e-waste;
Hypocritical environmentalists: Don't eat meat, eggs and milk!
The topic of climate warming has been talked about for many years, and the development trend of new energy vehicles can also be seen that environmental protection issues have become an important matter of general concern to all countries in the world. It's just that the biggest voice is an ulterior motive, and those who really do things are buried in hard work.
When I was a child, I especially loved to read popular science books and programs, and in the 90s there was a popular saying: the oil on the earth is only enough for 50 years, and everyone must save all kinds of resources. So I personally have always attached great importance to reducing waste, plastic bags for buying things can be used, garbage bags when they are almost broken, eating in the canteen as much as possible without leftovers, and so on.
Can a phone that is eliminated in a year circle the earth?
But to this day, the phenomenon of human waste is still shocking from the data point of view, there is a big family in the United States, and the efforts of each of us do not seem to have much help to the overall environmental protection cause (in fact, of course not). In the digital industry where I am now, the number of various electronic products in the world is billions of years, according to the data I found:
1, only say mobile phones, according to the latest data of the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to December 2021, the output of mobile communication handhelds (mobile phones) of industrial enterprises above designated size in the mainland increased by 7.0% year-on-year to 1661.516 million units, and the growth rate was 16.5 percentage points higher than that in the same period in 2020. Using the simplest multiplication estimates, China generated at least 406.8 million used phones last year.
According to Earth911, the U.S. is more responsible for e-waste than any other country. The article introduces more facts about e-waste: about 416,000 mobile phones are discarded every day (152 million per year);
3. As of June 2021, there are 3.95 billion smartphone users and a total global population of 7.9 billion, that is, 50% of the world's population owns smartphones.
China has 1.65 billion mobile phone users, eliminated 400 million mobile phones, theoretically eliminate 24.6% of mobile phones every year, many places are not rich, we put the world average down point, all add up to 20% elimination rate to calculate, 4 billion × 20% ≈ 800 million. A mobile phone is measured at 15 centimeters, the circumference of the earth is about 40,212 kilometers, and only 268 million mobile phones are connected end to end.
There are gold mines in the old phone
Everyone who has read the instructions of mobile phones and other electronic products knows that there is a list of harmful elements on the last page, and in recent years there has been basically no lead, but heavy metals and metal elements such as cadmium, mercury, and tin still exist. In short, these poisonous things are simply buried or burned by a fire, which is a conventional way of disposing of garbage. Emissions into the atmosphere and soil affect the safety of our lives.
At the same time that astronomers continue to discover various celestial bodies composed of "gold" and "diamonds", we do not have the ability to fly over to engage in cosmic mining, so this bit of minerals on the earth is finished. Recycling resources that have been consumed is something that has to be done.
And extracting resources from waste mobile phones is far more cost-effective than mining, the most valuable metals you can think of at once, gold, silver, copper, platinum, lithium, palladium, rare earths and so on are included in a mobile phone, as for the content of how you have a concept?
The answers to the data I collected online were not uniform, the first version: more than 270 grams of gold per ton of used mobile phones (without batteries); the second version: for every million mobile phones recycled, they produced: 35,274 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold and 33 pounds of palladium. Third version:
1 mobile phone is calculated by 0.15 kg, 10,000 mobile phones are 1.5 tons, 3 data are averaged down, and 1 ton of old mobile phone gold alone has 110-335 grams. In the case of mining gold, each ton of ore contains more than 1 gram of gold (technical term: gold grade) to break even, and 1 ton of ore contains dozens of grams of gold is the best source.
With this several times more gold content, dismantling mobile phones is much more profitable than mining, and the cost of extracting gold from mobile phone circuit boards is 20%-65% lower than that of mining and smelting primary gold mines. The 'gold content' of this sleeping mine of discarded electronic products is much higher than that of ordinary high-quality primary mines.
But you can't dig up
However, ordinary people with calculators know how to make money in business how not to hear that anyone is as famous as Musk and Cao Dewang? Because no one has yet made a lot of money from it, although the cost is lower than mining, but the upfront investment is high. First of all, the owner's old mobile phone must be purchased at a low price, and then these complex precious metals must be extracted, which needs to be dismantled by a large number of workers and soaked in dozens of highly toxic and expensive chemicals. Eventually, it is necessary to comply with the government's environmental regulations and allocate waste treatment equipment at a high price.
Under such requirements, there are no less than a few qualified and funded, even in the United States, the recycling rate of waste electronic products is only 12.5%, and the mainland will even be less than 10% by 2020. Therefore, Lei Jun's proposal at this year's two sessions specifically talked about promoting the construction of a system for recycling waste electronic products.
If by 2030, the mainland's electronic product recovery rate can reach 85%, the total value of the recovered metal will be as high as 130 billion yuan, which will save about 30 billion kWh of energy and reduce nearly 22 million tons of carbon emissions than mining primary ore, equivalent to a Boeing 747-400 26,000 trips between Beijing and New York.
True environmentalists are immersed in research
The good news is that the mainland is now catching up and has made considerable progress in technology and scale.
"China Electrical Appliance Research Institute Co., Ltd. proposed a green chemical wet recovery process technology, in the non-cyanide, low corrosion medium to achieve a short process of mobile phone circuit board bottom plating material directional stripping gold, the chemical used in the process can be recycled many times, the metal recovery rate can reach 98%, purity of 99%; in addition, Beijing University of Technology has carried out the use of ultrasound assist, ionic liquid leaching of rare precious metals research. Shanghai Second Polytechnic University has carried out research on the use of microorganisms to recover metals, etc. In terms of mobile phone dismantling technology and equipment research, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, and Sichuan Changhong Gerun Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. have successively developed automated dismantling equipment based on mechanical visual recognition for the whole machine, chip and LCD screen. ——"Discussion on the Development Status of Waste Mobile Phone Recycling" Author: Deng Meiling
Now there are several mainstream ideas, the first is from the source, in the design and production process to reduce special materials or the use of recycled materials, designed for a more easy to disassemble and recycle style.
Apple's sense of smell for trends is a must, and it supports what topics are hot, such as LGBT
Huawei's results in reducing consumption on packaging are also very good
The back cover of the True Self GT2 Pro is made of recycled pulp, but it is not afraid of water
The second category is the refurbished life-sustaining type, the speed of manufacturers out of new machines is more and more frequent, many old models of performance is not completely outdated, can be refurbished and then sold backwards, France has a second-hand mobile phone e-commerce called back market in 3 years to achieve a valuation of 5.7 billion US dollars. Many mobile phone brands encourage the trade-in, and old mobile phones spend money to recycle themselves to refurbish themselves and sell themselves.
The third type of throwing pot type, the packaging boat that cannot be handled by itself is thrown to the developing countries, and it is not clear to see. We used to suffer from it, and now yesterday we are the ones who shouted that people pay carbon taxes. After the state announced that it would not accept foreign garbage, the diplomatic mouth was also attacked by the group, hey.
False environmentalists are inconsistent in their words and deeds
What makes people helpless is that the logic of capital and the correct logic are in conflict, we spend money to buy a commodity to make it a lasting quality service to ourselves, and the logic of capital is to let you continue to spend money on new products. Imagine who now dares to learn A.O Smith 's advertising words (water heaters that can be used for half a century).
This video is particularly well said, decades ago the ads are competing for whose product life is long, and now they are talking about performance.
So modern industry has more words called "planned (timed) scrapping", although the product life is too long to make enterprises unable to sell new products. But it is also acceptable to set a 5-6 year, and it is a bit excessive to discount the performance of 2 years.
The development of industry and the economy will inevitably produce a certain amount of pollution, environmental protection has now become a weapon of some of the rich, you want to live in the day when there is meat, milk as water to drink the day will be slandered and destroy the ecological environment.
This can have fans, and I am desperate for basic education in Europe and the United States
The inner ghost is even more hateful
You should know who it is
In the name of environmental protection, what they do is not helpful to environmental protection, and the purpose behind the funny behavior is nothing more than to stop our development and avoid blocking the financial path of their financial owners. The empty office where the paper clip man went was the best orientation venue for the company near us. It is said that the media has no position, but we have a bottom line! The media does not do anything to its own people.
What can we do?
For ordinary people, the best way not to let e-waste pollute the environment is to use a mobile phone for as long as possible, and if a mobile phone is used for a long time, you will change the mobile phone less. If you want to change the machine, you can give it to the elderly or children to use it. The second is to recycle for money, which can not be delayed for too long, don't wait until a few generations later to think of selling, that little money is easier to be angry than the price of buying it.
If you like to change your mobile phone, the old machine should be bought quickly
When it comes to recycling, I know that everyone is worried about the leakage of personal privacy, so the data available is that 68.2% of the old mobile phones in China and the United States are thrown in the drawer, and it is better to sell them or recycle them into resources than to put them away. It's also a good idea to frame your phone, and it's a great work of art to disassemble and spread out your favorite phone into a photo frame.
If sold to recycling companies will not be extracted personal information. The answer is no, first of all, you must choose a regular organization, at least that kind of chain, much more reliable than the roadside shop, they will have professional technical means, if you are still not at ease, you can follow the instructions below.
Environmental protection is a great thing, to protect the environment is to change the mobile phone less, less mobile phone to save money. Therefore, saving money is environmental protection, environmental protection is saving money, and spending less money is to contribute to Mother Earth.