Mobile recycling could become more efficient thanks to fish
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - 10:20:33
A team of researchers in Japan has come up with a novel way of extracting the maximum amount of precious materials from mobile phones and other electronics that are being recycled, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The process relies upon the sperm produced by salmon, which is known as milt and eaten as part of gourmet recipes in Japan. And the idea is to recoup important minerals from electronics as they are recycled, thus reducing the amount of fresh materials that have to be extracted from the Earth’s crust.
While it is currently possible to extract many precious metals from old mobile phones, the problem with many of the techniques used is that they are not especially eco-friendly in their own right, relying on harmful chemicals which, in turn, need to be disposed of responsibly. And so work to find alternatives has been ongoing, with the Japanese breakthrough being a step in the right direction.
It is the DNA within the milt produced by salmon that is of interest to experts, who have discovered that bacteria with the ability to bind to rare earth minerals, and extract them from water, could be adapted to aid in the recycling process.
Milt is widely available, as well as being eco-friendly and affordable, so it looks like this new form of recycling could make selling an old mobile phone an even cleaner, greener and more efficient thing to do.
Quite how quickly this discovery will be adopted by the recycling industry remains to be seen, but with a growing need to recycle electronic waste in Asia, it seems that it could quickly become a key tool in the fight to reclaim more of the metals and minerals from within unwanted mobile phones.
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