CThis question arises more and more: What to do with our old electronic devices? A company in Belgium has found the solution: It recovers the precious metals (notably gold) contained in this waste. This factory is located in Hoboken in Belgium and it transforms your user mobile phones into gold bars. This processing center, unique in Europe, recycles used mobile phones and old computers by recovering the precious metals they contain.
Indeed, the electronic cards of this waste have value. In each electronic card there are metal connectors which can be in gold, this is what is recovered in this factory thanks to a complex process. Other metals may also be present such as silver, platinum or palladium (rare metal from the platinum family). All these metals are rare, therefore they are expensive.
Of course, the amount of precious metal in a phone is small and it takes thousands of devices to get a significant amount of gold. For example, a classic mobile phone contains about 50 cents of precious metals and a smartphone contains about 1 euro. Obtaining 1 kg of gold (around €40000) requires 50000 mobile phones.
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